Watch M.I.A. Perform in Protest of Julian Assange’s Extradition
Today (November 5), M.I.A. performed outside the UK Government’s Home Office in protest of the possible extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Watch footage from the event, which M.I.A. called, simply enough, “Don’t Extradite Assange,” below.
Julian Assange had been living at the Embassy of Ecuador in London from 2012 until earlier this year when the Ecuadorian government suspended his citizenship. He is currently in custody in England and facing extradition to the United States where he’s charged with conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network in 2010. His extradition hearing is set for February 2020.
M.I.A. is a longtime supporter of Julian Assange. In 2017, after Swedish prosecutors dropped a sexual assault investigation against him, she penned a statement in his defense. (The Swedish authorities reopened the investigation earlier this year.) That same year, she hosted a panel with Assange at Meltdown Festival. In years prior, she contributed music to his TV show The World Tomorrow and even had him Skype in to open one of her concerts in New York.
Read “M.I.A. vs. the System: A Complete Timeline of Her Controversies” and “The Survivor: A Conversation With M.I.A.”
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
