Wikileaks founder Julian Assange attended the Cannes Film Festival in a T-shirt carrying the names of 4,986 Palestinian children who lost their lives since the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out in 2023, as per reports.
Pictures and videos of the Australian editor-publisher at the French Riviera were shared by the official X handle of Wikileaks, a non-profit organisation known for publishing classified, censored, or otherwise restricted information, often related to government and corporate misconduct.
“Julian Assange wore a Stop Israel T-shirt. Stella Assange wore a large message saying "Stop Killing". Two messages. One demand: end the violence,” reads the caption of the post on X.
The Cannes visit marks Assange’s first public appearance since his release from prison last year. He attended the film festival to promote The Six Billion Dollar Man documentary by American director Eugene Jarecki.
According to AFP, Assange had spent five years behind bars fighting extradition from Britain and another seven holed up in the Ecuador embassy in London, where he claimed political asylum.
The 53-year-old former hacker was released from a high-security British prison last June after a plea bargain with the US government over Wikileaks's work publishing top-secret military and diplomatic information, as per AFP.
“The Six Billion Dollar Man, an award-winning documentary and recent Golden Globe winner, premieres at the Cannes Film Festival. It traces WikiLeaks’ groundbreaking publications, the persecution that followed, and the campaign that secured Julian Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison,” according to WikiLeaks. “The film is an unflinching account of war crimes, surveillance, state power, and the human cost of exposing the truth,” they added.
Assange appeared at Cannes alongside his wife Stella, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Joseph Farrell, Eugene Jarecki, Rafael Correa, Jen Robinson, and the team behind the documentary.