 As we all know, Julian Assange has been arrested, taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and is now in British custody. To talk about this, we have Renata Avila, a very well-known lawyer and civil rights activist in Latin America, and actually, digital rights activists for the entire world. Renata, bad day for the world and freedom, particularly freedom of press, because the intergovernmental body had already given a directive to the Ecuadorian government that Julian cannot be arrested without a proper legal process. He cannot be extradited, cannot be handed over to the British government in this way. The Ecuadorian government has really disregarded that advisory and also what the world opinion was saying about this. Well, basically, the Ecuadorian government, when even beyond this, the Ecuadorian government completely ignored its obligations under international law. It was brutal. It was an act, it was a political persecution act. It is just one in this chain of political persecution that the other government has been using as its foreign policy since Lenin and Moreno took power. But you have to understand, here there's the small actor, Ecuador, and the big actors, the big dogs. And the big dogs are the US government and the UK government. And it is a terrible day for Western democracies because, you know, I've come from Latin America and asylum was an institution that we shaped in the region, that we shape in the region to assist dissidents, to assist even politicians, you know, the world suffering political persecution. And no, it is the first time that a Latin American embassy opens the doors to an empire to sacrifice a political prisoner. It is outrageous. Was it because of the IMF loan that Ecuador is seeking? Or is it also the fact that some information has come out about Moreno's family and their involvement in some offshore account, which WikiLeaks also carried? I think that it was a sealed deal since a long time ago, as WikiLeaks warned at its moment. It is the usual way, the Bananago Republic's Ecuador Act, US snaps and they jump. And that's what sometimes even without in exchange of nothing, you see how the US treats Latin Americans. I mean, less than animals. That's the way that we are described in the US. And in spite of that, this president fearing, you know, fearing, I don't know, maybe he has a lot to fear. Well, I think he has a lot to fear because of the systematic corruption of his family. And that's why the way that he reacted. But I don't want to focus that long on Ecuador in the Ecuadorian because it's a small country. In the face of a very large empire. And in that sense, we have to congratulate at least what the previous government did. And it was a very brave of Korea, President Korea and then Ecuadorian government who stood up to the empire. Well, my only hope is that Rafael Correa will be back in power in Ecuador and will fix things and will keep these people a lesson. Because it is not the way that we hope Latin America will be in the future. But it is part of a regional crackdown on the left, basically. Renata, you are also a lawyer who's been fighting for civil rights on various issues. What do you think the legal course would be in England now, in the UK? Well, there's a hard chance that we will win the extradition case in the UK. Julian has the most capable team of lawyers and Julian has the reason on his side. It is crystal clear that this is a political persecution. There's no space for doubt. It has nothing to do with protecting the public interest, but protecting the people from closing the eyes of people so they cannot see the abuses of their government. That's what this case is about. And there's a good recent precedence, like Laurie Love case in the UK, where the UK refused to extradite him to the US. And I think that the two important points here that we need to keep while describing the situation is number one, it is political. Number two, Julian is not a hacker. The act of the situation described in the charges finally is closed by the US Justice Department. They try really hard to change the narrative and to drive the narrative by describing him as a hacker, as two hackers conspiring to do bad things inside the US government systems. The situation they describe in that document is of a source, talking to a journalist, as any source and any journalist in all over the world talk at any time by criminalising and using the wrong words to describe these people while they were exercising the right to seek and receive information, a universally protected right. We helped the US narrative to criminalise the act of power. But if we accept this argument that Washington Post should have been charged under criminal law as a newspaper for publishing Pentagon papers, it's no different. Except they say it's a digital platform, we will not extend all these rights. And that's the important part because together with killing freedom of expression, they want to kill all the space for journalistic innovation. I was reading the charges and in some part they pay spatial attention to the Dropbox. And you know that these Dropbox are saving people's lives all over the world because many newsrooms have adopted the WikiLeaks standard. The WikiLeaks standard is that you will do as much as possible of not knowing the identity of your source and keeping the source anonymous. And that's part of the brilliant technical advance that WikiLeaks wrote to the journalistic world. And the US is targeting that specifically. So, already last words you have for the global community. How we should react to this, particularly the new, what shall I say, the digital media whose actually freedom is at stake because if this is accepted against WikiLeaks we are all then not protected under anything that the press is accustomed to being which is that we have a right if a whistleblower comes to us to put the document in public domain. We are at a crossroads. We are really in a defined moment and this moment should be defined by principles and courage. That's my point of view for the international community. I would say this is jeopardizing the right to know of the people outside the US and outside the Western world if we have unequal right to know and if any person trying to elevate that right to exercise the right for us because that's the crime. The crime of Julian Assange is that he's not an American and that he has opened up. He's a truly international journalist. His internationalism has been so powerful that he, without making a profit, without being like elevated as many gurus get elevated when they create an app to make us slaves of our devices, he did the opposite. He created a public interest technology and then he innovated so much in journalism and opened up the ability for anyone in the world without paying a cent, without being tracked to know about precisely the kind of documents that those in power do not want us to know and they do not want us to know because if we know what is really going on behind closed doors we will get really upset. And we are very upset now because we know that this constant censoring and restriction and access to information to all of us is what is keeping us with the hands tight and it's time to stop it. The battle for the freedom of Julian Assange is the battle of freedom as well. Thank you, Renata, for being with us. The real crime of Julian Assange is speaking truth to power, the fundamental task of all media. Thank you very much, Renata. One more thing, we need to keep the good spirits. We need to smile, we need to enjoy. I guess when he was taking to the police he was doing this, that's Julian and that should be us. Let's not be in despair, let's not be sad and let's take this to the next level. We are going to win because we are right. Thank you for those inspiring words. Thank you for being with us, Renata. Thank you, Praveer.