1. Free Hugs Movement Arrested
2. Free Hugs Movement Wikipedia

Feb 17, 2016  This past December I spent an unseasonably balmy Sunday afternoon on The National Mall in Washington D.C. Giving out Free Hugs with three friends. For those who are not familiar with it, Free Hugs is a social movement that began in Australia in 2004 by a man who had been feeling depressed and lonely. The Free Hugs Campaign is Sweeping the World If the video doesn't start in a few moments, please refresh the page. To join this exciting worldwide movement, see the Free Hugs Campaign website.

The man in front of me has fear in his eyes. Fear, suspicion, and something else, something more subtle, that I realise after a few seconds is pity. It is the evening rush hour in London and I am standing in the middle of Carnaby Street holding aloft a placard that reads: 'Free Hugs'. My mission is simply to reach out to strangers, clasp them close and make them feel better about their day – no strings attached. But this man isn't convinced.

'What are you selling?' he asks.

'Nothing,' I explain. 'We're just offering hugs to people. For free.'

The man slips his iPhone out of his jacket pocket and takes a photo, as if he cannot quite believe what he is seeing. I open my arms in what I hope is a welcoming, earth-motherly fashion. I remember what I've been told in the pre-hugs briefing by the group co-ordinator: smile, but not so much that you look psychotic, and don't take offence if someone doesn't want to hug you back. I wait. The man looks uneasy, a bit embarrassed and then, unexpectedly, his face breaks into a smile.

He hugs me. And although I've been secretly dreading the moment when I'll have to engage in a surprisingly intimate act with a stranger who might have all manner of personal hygiene problems, I discover that it's a nice feeling. We hold each other for a moment, then release. We exchange smiles and I watch as he makes his way back down the street. I like to think there is a certain lightness in his step that wasn't there before, but it's probably just that he's walking more quickly in order to get away from the crazy woman with the 'Free Hugs' placard.

The story of how I got to be here, pressing flesh with random pedestrians, is an intriguing one. It is a story of how, eight years ago, a man from Sydney set out to bring us all a little bit closer and founded the Free Hugs movement. It is a story of how the idea caught hold of people's imaginations across the globe and made him famous. It is a story of how he set out to spread free love but ended up in a battle of bitter recrimination over money. And it is a story, ultimately, about how you can start with the best of intentions and yet end up disillusioned.

In June 2004, an Australian who went by the pseudonym Juan Mann started giving out free hugs in his local shopping mall. Mann had reached a point of personal crisis in his own life: his parents had divorced and his fiancée had broken off their engagement. He realised that people were living increasingly disconnected lives. The need for human contact had been neglected. In Mann's eyes, we were living in a computer-mediated culture where friends were made through MySpace and families were breaking down. Where previously small-scale local communities had been integral to individual wellbeing, now people were pursuing far-flung separate lives in different corners of the globe.

Mann hand-wrote a sign advertising Free Hugs and went to the Pitt Street Mall in central Sydney, where he stood for 15 long, lonely minutes before an elderly lady took pity on him. Her dog had just died, she confessed, and the hug had made her feel better. Soon Juan Mann was handing out hugs every few seconds. As the days passed, more volunteers with their own handwritten signs came and stood alongside him.

Shimon Moore was one of them.

'I had a job holding a sign advertising a sale on shoes,' Moore says, speaking to me from his home in Los Angeles. 'I saw this guy offering free hugs one day. I thought it was a great idea, so I started talking to him.'

Moore wrote songs in his spare time and was the lead singer for a band called Sick Puppies. The band was looking for a record deal, so Moore took his father's video camera to the mall and started to film Juan Mann with the idea of making a music video. Free Hugs had started taking off: every day, hundreds of shoppers would stop to be hugged by the anonymous man with the home-made placard. By October the police had got wind of it and threatened to ban the movement. Ten thousand people signed a petition. The police backed down.

Moore filmed it all. When he and his band, Sick Puppies, moved to Los Angeles in March 2005 in search of a record deal, he edited the footage, set it to music and sent it back to Mann in Sydney as a present. Mann posted the video on YouTube and it went viral, attracting 70m views.

'I had a feeling when I was making it that this was good, that it would connect with people – and that doesn't happen often,' Moore says now. 'I did it in one night. It was just really flowing.'

The YouTube video made Juan Mann into something of a celebrity and his campaign attracted global media coverage. By 2006 he was being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and Free Hugs was going international: branches sprang up in Taiwan, Israel, Italy, America, Switzerland, Norway, India, Portugal and the UK. It seemed to touch a nerve.

In Philadelphia a sociology professor called Faye Allard set up her own Free Hugs spin-off and explained its appeal. 'The success of the movement reflects the fact that we're all becoming increasingly isolated,' she said. 'Households no longer contain extended family, people stay single for longer and have children later. This is compounded by the fact that we have become more geographically mobile… Phones, the internet and email mean that much of our personal contact is reduced to electronic interaction. What the Free Hugs movement does is restore a sense of community in a society of disparate individuals. It gives us a sense that we belong.'

Off the back of the YouTube video, Moore and his band got a record deal. They started selling Free Hugs merchandise at their gigs – T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with Juan Mann's distinctive handwriting. Mann wrote a book – The Illustrated Guide to Free Hugs – became an after-dinner speaker and published his address and mobile-phone number online, offering to go for a meal with anyone who contacted him. For a while, everything was good.

But then it all went quiet. When I attempt to get in touch with Juan Mann, he seems to have disappeared. I try sending him messages through his website, his Facebook profile and his Twitter account. I call the number he published online and the line goes dead. I contact his friends, none of whom will tell me his real name. They tell me Juan hasn't been in touch for a long time. There are a few dark murmurings about him 'flipping out' and going to live in a surfer's community north of Sydney. One of them gives me another phone number and that doesn't work either.

Eventually I track down a brief interview Mann gave to a New York-based business news website in 2010 in which he claimed Shimon Moore had screwed him over financially by getting him to sign up with the same management company that represented Sick Puppies.

'I complied, believing that Shimon, as my friend, would make certain that we were both amply compensated for the video and the Free Hugs merchandise the band sells,' Mann said. But according to Mann, that didn't happen: he claimed all the earnings went straight to Moore and his band members.

'Needless to say,' Mann continued, 'we aren't friends anymore… I haven't seen a dollar from the band, nor the manager.'

When I speak to Moore, he is clearly uncomfortable. 'That's a touchy subject,' he says over the phone. 'I haven't commented before because I don't want to fuck up the brand. The truth is, we had a falling-out over money… Juan flipped out and got lawyers and stuff. He totally changed when he got famous, and it messed up our friendship. But I don't want people to focus on that because Free Hugs is supposed to be about love, not two guys bickering.'

Moore seems genuinely distressed about the falling-out. He loved Free Hugs.

'It wasn't a Christian thing or a colour thing or a cultural thing in one country,' he says. 'Everyone likes a hug no matter what, no matter how broken you are.

'It's just a shame because it was Juan's thing: he made it, he started it.' He sighs. 'But the beautiful thing now is that it's so much bigger than any one person.'

He sounds as if he is trying to persuade himself. And yet it is true that the concept of Free Hugs has been extremely influential. People still stand on busy streets holding placards in much the same way as Juan Mann did all those years ago. Majella Greene, a former social worker, founded the London-based Guerrilla Hugs in January 2010. She is currently studying for an MSc in Positive Psychology and is interested in the positive impact touch can have on human interaction.

'My concern is that as we get older, as children grow up, the amount we experience positive, platonic touching reduces,' Greene says when we meet in a café with other volunteers who have given up their time to hug total strangers of a Thursday evening. Greene is an enthusiastic and bubbly speaker, much given to expressive hand gestures. I get the impression that most of the people round the table have been won over by the sheer zeal of her personality. 'In the UK, there's this moral panic about physical contact with other people, either in the workplace or with children because of concerns around sexual harassment or worries that teachers are going to be accused of paedophilia,' she says. 'You've got a generation of children growing up playing computer games without being able to take part in normal rough and tumble that builds up alliances.'

Greene cites research by the psychologist James W Prescott, who claimed in the 60s and 70s that the lack of affectionate contact between mothers and infants could result in permanent brain abnormalities associated with depression, substance abuse, eating disorders and violence. More recently the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that primates groom each other for longer than they need to in order to cement bonds, make friends and influence fellow primates.

'I think that's true of human beings as well,' explains Greene. 'If they experience non- sexual physical contact, they're more likely to feel protected and protective of each other.'

Greene says that everyone has their favourite hugging story. 'I hugged an older man a while back whose wife had died 14 years ago and he hadn't been hugged in all that time,' she recalls, looking distinctly misty-eyed. 'He stood talking for ages about how he'd not been held or touched and how it made him feel better that I had… When people turn round and say: 'Thank you, I really needed that,' it makes me want to cry.'

There is a sense that such acts of gentleness are having a necessary comeback after decades of aggressive self-interest and self-promotion. Perhaps it is partly allied to the economic crisis, to a new-found respect for the simpler things in life that do not need to be bought with a credit card. For years we worshipped at the altar of conspicuous consumption in an age when fame was accorded for marrying a footballer or appearing on reality television, and when friendships were made and lost at the click of a computer mouse. These days we take more delight in the everyday kindnesses, in the shared experience.

That, at least, was the thinking behind the artist Michael Landy's recent project, Acts of Kindness, in which he invited members of the public to submit stories online of kindnesses they had witnessed or been part of while travelling on London Underground.

'People can exist in a bubble on the tube,' he explains when we meet for a coffee at the National Gallery. 'They're reading their paper or listening to their MP3 player and everyone is cut off from each other, trying not to make eye contact. It's partly what you have to do to survive in a city like this, but I was surprised by the response I got. Often we feel that everybody is out for themselves, but that isn't the case at all.'

Landy received countless stories: of women crying after the break-up of a relationship and being offered a smile or a reassuring squeeze, of someone making an origami bird and dropping it into the lap of a person who looked lonely, of strangers helping with heavy luggage.

'I was interested in that emotional bridge between self and other,' Landy says. 'Every now and then, someone does something kind, and it's life-enhancing because you're mixing your emotions with complete strangers.'

Back on Carnaby Street, my efforts to mix my emotions with complete strangers are gathering pace. Some people walk past the Guerrilla Huggers with understandable wariness in their eyes. Others – and it is disproportionately young women in their 20s – get the idea immediately and hug me without my having to explain. A handful of shop assistants pop out to have a hug in their cigarette break. A Belgian tourist with a camera slung round his neck tells me there should be more of this kind of thing. I get hugged by a nine-year-old boy, a pensioner and a member of the French Olympic boxing team who explains he is very sad after having lost his match. Every single hug makes me smile. I enjoy it far more than I thought I would.

As I'm standing there, handing out hugs to people I've never met before and will probably never meet again, it strikes me that there's an obvious irony in the fact that a movement predicated on free gestures of intimacy should have been riven by in-fighting about money between the two men who made it happen. But maybe it doesn't matter. Like most of the best ideas, Free Hugs has gathered its own momentum. After all, it was always meant to be bigger than just Juan Mann.

The Free Hugs Campaign is a social movement involving individuals who offer hugs to strangers in public places.^[1] The hugs are meant to be random acts of kindness—selfless acts performed just to make others feel better. International Free Hugs Month is celebrated on the first Saturday of July and continues until August first.

The campaign in its present form was started in 2004 by an Australian man known only by the pseudonym 'Juan Mann'.^[2] The campaign became famous internationally in 2006 as the result of a music video on YouTube by the Australian band Sick Puppies, which has been viewed over 78 million times as of April 16, 2019.

History[edit]

The Free Hugs campaign in its present form was started by Juan Mann on June 30, 2004, when he began giving out hugs in the Pitt Street Mall in central Sydney. In the months prior to this, Mann had been feeling depressed and lonely as a result of numerous personal difficulties. However, a random hug from a stranger made an enormous difference, with Mann stating that '...I went out to a party one night and a completely random person came up to me and gave me a hug. I felt like a king! It was greatest thing that ever happened.'

Mann carried the now iconic 'FREE HUGS' sign from the outset. However, on his first attempt in his hometown, where he returned to find that he was the only person he knew, as his friends and family had moved away, he had to wait fifteen minutes before an elderly lady came up to him and gave him a hug.^[3]

Initial distrust of Juan Mann's motives eventually gave way to a gradual increase of people willing to be hugged, with other huggers (male and female) helping distribute them. In October 2005 police told them they must stop, as Mann had not obtained public liability insurance worth $25 million for his actions. Mann and his companions used a petition to attempt to convince authorities that his campaign should be allowed to continue without the insurance. His petition reached 10,000 signatures. He submitted it and was allowed to continue giving free hugs.^[4]

Mann befriended Shimon Moore, lead singer for Sick Puppies, shortly after commencing his campaign, and over a two-month period in late 2005 Moore recorded video footage of Mann and his fellow huggers. Moore and his band moved to Los Angeles in March 2005 and nothing was immediately done with the footage. Meanwhile, Mann continued his campaign throughout 2005 and 2006 by appearing in Pitt Street Mall in Sydney most Thursday afternoons.

Free Hugs Movement Arrested

In mid-2006 Mann's grandmother died, and in consolation Moore made the music video using the footage he had shot in 2004 to send to Mann as a gift, stating in an interview that, 'I sent it to him on a disc as a present and I wrote down 'This is who you are'.'^[4] The video was later uploaded onto YouTube, where it has been viewed 74 million times as of October 2013.^[5]

On October 30, 2006, Mann was invited by Oprah Winfrey to appear on her show Oprah after her producer's doctor saw the Free Hugs video on YouTube. Juan Mann made an appearance outside her studio that morning, offering free hugs to the crowd waiting to see the taping of that day's episode. Oprah's camera crews caught several people in the audience hugging Mann as the morning progressed.^[6]

On October 23, 2007, Juan Mann announced his residential address online and offered an open invitation to anyone to come over and chat on-camera as part of his 'open-house project'. Mann hosted 80 guests over 36 days. On November 25, 2007, Mann's landlord threatened him with eviction, so he launched an online appeal.^[7]

On December 25, 2007, Juan Mann published an e-book as a free download. On November 22, 2008, at YouTube Live Sick Puppies did a performance of 'All the Same' while Juan Mann gave hugs to crowd members. On February 13, 2009 a Free Hug Day took place.

Free hugs signs were also commonly seen at Phish shows at least as early as 1996.^[8]

A website that is generally recognized^{[citation needed]} as the official site of the free hugs campaign, The Official Home of the Free Hugs Campaign,^[9] was launched in mid-2007. This site enables those involved in the campaign to better organize themselves and coordinate their efforts. Many initiatives resulted from these efforts. For example, on the website's forum (hosted on Dragon Arts),^[10] those involved in the campaign called for an annual International Free Hugs Day. Mann declared that the day would fall on the first Saturday following June 30 each year; this being the first date that Mann ever offered free hugs in Pitt Street Mall, Sydney in 2004. The first International Free Hugs Day was July 7, 2007, the second on July 5, 2008, and the third was on July 4, 2009. (See above regarding Valentine's Day).

Mann's Official Blog^[11] remained dormant after his apparent retirement but has been updated at times; it proclaims itself as the 'true home' of the Free Hugs Campaign and hosts interviews conducted with individuals holding Free Hugs Campaigns internationally.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, two men were arrested by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for offering free hugs in a public space. The move was criticized on Twitter, however others opposed the campaign altogether.^[12]

Publicity and expansion[edit]

Free Hugs Movement Wikipedia

• In October 2006, a college student, Yu Tzu-wei, began a campaign in Taipei to 'hug everyone in Taiwan'^[13]
• In October 2006, a Free Hugs Campaign began in Tel Aviv, Israel.^[14]
• In late October 2006, several Free Hugs Campaigns were organized in a number of cities in Italy.^[15]
• On October 27, 2006, students Steve Loftus, Mark Wonnacott and Jeff Jones from Illinois-based McKendree University were featured in news media, including MLB.com, for giving free hugs before game five of the World Series in front of Busch Stadium.^[16]
• On November 6, 2006, a group of eleven people led by a 24-year-old man named 'Baigu' (白骨) tried the same campaign in Shanghai, only to be detained for one hour for not having a permit to hold a gathering in a public place.^[17]
• On November 10, 2006, A Free Hugs event in Boulder, Colorado was covered by local media.^[18]
• On November 18, 2006, Geneva Online, an online community, organized the first Free Hugs event in Geneva, Switzerland.^[19]
• On November 22, two Korean boy students organized a Free Hugs Campaign outside the Ngee Ann City shopping mall along Orchard Road, Singapore. In a novel bid to spread the festive cheer, they had this campaign for the following consecutive Saturdays.^[20]
• In late 2006 a Free Hugs Campaign commenced in Belgium with events on December 22 and December 23 in Antwerp and on December 30 in Ghent.^[21][22]
• In March 2007, as part of an initiative to combat discrimination against people infected with AIDS or HIV, the French Government called on its citizens to embrace strangers who hoist signs in the street offering free hugs.^[23]
• On April 14, 2007, Portuguese waitress Sara Viera living in Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England was reported on both BBC News and local press^[24] to be giving Free Hugs in the streets of Newcastle City Centre.
• On December 20, 2008, Indian composer A. R. Rahman and percussionist Sivamani created a song titled 'Jiya Se Jiya', inspired by the Free Hugs Campaign and promoted it through a video shot in various cities in India.^[25]
• In February 2009, a free hug offer startled downtown Toronto shoppers.^[26]
• In July 2009, a Jordanian radio station celebrated International Free Hugs Day by creating the first Free Hugs video from an Arab country.^[27]
• In August 2009, in Norway Free Hugs were offered by the Red Cross Youth in the yearly market 'Steinkjermartnan'.^[28]
• On July 3, 2010, The first 'FREE HUGS Campaign for AIDS' was organized by a group of friends from a non-profit organization called 'SHADOW of BODHI', at six different places at Chennai, India.^[29]
• Since February 10, 2011, a group of young people are organizing several events in Portugal, starting in the North and ending in the South. They already had several presences on Portuguese television and have been congratulated by the father of the campaign, Juan Mann. The group remains in activity and continues to give hugs around Portugal and soon hopes to spread love in the whole country. They had given hugs in Vila Nova de Famalicão and Braga (twice), Guimarães, Porto, Aveiro, Espinho, Coimbra and Lisbon. On September 21, with Vincent Marx, Fernando Moinho and Edwin Bustos, they organized the event called 'Free Hugs for World Peace'.^[30] For 2012, they are trying to break the Guinness World Record for 'Most People Hugging Each Other'^[31] in Vila Nova de Famalicão.^[32]
• In September 2012, Polish traveler, Maksym Skorubski went for a trip 'Hugs Around The World in 80 days', during which he gave out free hugs to 6,783 people in 19 countries around the world. His tour was nominated by National Geographic Traveler as the best journey of 2012.^[33]
• Since early 2013, a group under the name 'Free Hugs Vienna' organizes several 'free hugs' events in Austria. They already had several actions organized in Vienna and some of their group members went free-hugging in events abroad as well. The most remarkable of these international events was the group's support in Conchita Wurst's Eurovision Song Contest 2014 campaign, in which the group opened their arms to embrace the message of tolerance through 'free hugs'.^{[34][35][36][37][38]}
• In November 2013 a Free hugs campaign has landed in Saudi Arabia after Bandr al-Swed, a Saudi young man released a video of him marching in the streets of the capital Riyadh offering free hugs to people of the Kingdom.^[39]
• From 2015 to 2019, in the month of May, members of the “Free Hugs Vienna” team were active during the Eurovision Song Contest week in Vienna (2015), Stockholm (2016), Kiev (2017), Lisbon (2018) and Tel-Aviv (2019). Aligning with the event's motto “Building Bridges” (2015), 'Come Together' (2016), 'Celebrate Diversity' (2017), 'All Aboard' (2018) and 'Dare to Dream' (2019), the “free huggers” connected with members of the international press, fans and other guests in the Eurovision Press Center, Euro Fan Café and in front of the Eurovision arena on the days of the semi finals and final. 2019 is the sixth year in a row that 'Free Hugs Vienna' is active in the ESC context in partnership with the Austrian broadcaster, ORF. (see above for more details) ^{[40][41][42][43][44][45]}
• Some protesters carried 'free hugs' signs during the Ferguson unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and at protests following the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2016.^[46][47]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Ellen Connolly Hugs and smiles, but not everyone embraces the trendSydney Morning Herald, December 1, 2004
2. ^WHO Magazine Interview Spreading the Love: Juan Mann December 1, 2004
3. ^The Gift of Giving BackThe Oprah Winfrey Show.
4. ^ ^abWho Magazine Spreading the Love: Shimon Moore (Sick Puppies) January 30, 2007
5. ^Free Hugs Campaign - Official Page (music by Sick Puppies.net )
6. ^Oprah.com Juan Mann on OprahArchived December 1, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
7. ^Andrew Ramadge, Free Hugs star a 'security risk'NEWS.com.au
8. ^'The Daily Gazette - Google News Archive Search'. news.google.com. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
9. ^'Official Home of the Free Hugs Campaign - Inspired by Juan Mann - Home'. freehugscampaign.org. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
10. ^http://www.dragonarts.us/forum
11. ^'Juan Mann - True Home of the Free Hugs Campaign'. juanmann.com. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
12. ^'Saudi police arrest two over 'free hugs''. aljazeera.com. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
13. ^Free Hugs campaign arrives in Taiwan, Independent Online (South Africa), October 7, 2006
14. ^'Free Hugs campaign of Tel Aviv'. Nrg.co.il. 2007-04-23. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
15. ^'News on Corriere della Sera'. Corriere.it. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
16. ^'Major League Baseball: Photo Gallery'. mlb.com. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
17. ^'Huggers end up in police custody'. Chinadaily.com.cn. 2006-11-06. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
18. ^Boyd, Shaun. 'Free Hugs' Movement Spreads To Boulder'. CBS4 News (Denver, Colorado). Archived from the original on November 12, 2006.
19. ^A little tenderness in a world of roughness... (in French)
20. ^The Straits Times, 'The Sunday Times Lifestyle', L5. December 24, 2006. 'Care for a hug?' by Eunice Quek.
21. ^Gratis knuffels op de Meir (in Dutch)
22. ^Goedaardig virus verovert de wereld (in Dutch)
23. ^Free hugs for FranceArchived March 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, news.com.au, March 12, 2007
24. ^'icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk'. icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
25. ^'Rahman advocates free hugs for peace'. Daily News and Analysis. 15 December 2008. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
26. ^'Toronto Star'. Thestar.com. 2009-02-09. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
27. ^'Free Hugs Jordan'. YouTube. 2009-07-05. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
28. ^'Gratis martnasklem - NRK Trøndelag - NRK Nyheter'. Nrk.no. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
29. ^'Say it with a hug'. The Hindu. Chennai, India. July 13, 2010.
30. ^'Free Hugs for World Peace'. September 21, 2011.
31. ^'Most People Hugging Each Other'. June 8, 2012.
32. ^'Free Hugs - Abraços Grátis'.
33. ^'Hugs Around The World in 80 days'.
34. ^'Free Hugs in the Press Centre!'. The Eurovision Times. Austria. May 3, 2014.
35. ^'#freehugs for everybody, spread tolerance #eurovisionsongcontest2014'. ESC Austria. Austria. May 3, 2014.
36. ^'CONCHITA'S BOY GIVING FREE HUGS'. OIKO Times. Austria. May 8, 2014.
37. ^'»Drück mich!«'. Jüdische Allgemeine. Austria. July 28, 2016.
38. ^'The Power of Touch'. Reader's Digest. Austria. May 15, 2017.
39. ^''Free Hugs' campaign lands in Saudi Arabia'.
40. ^'Gratis-Umarmungen für Song-Contest-Fans'. Salzburger Nachrichten. Austria. May 22, 2015.
41. ^''Free Hugs' - Freiwillige verteilen herzige Umarmungen'. Heute.at. Austria. May 17, 2015.
42. ^'Free hugs Vienna: Meet Eurovision 2015 hugger Thyago'. Wiwibloggs. Austria. May 21, 2015.
43. ^'A Day In the Life Of Eurovision - Thyago Ohana aka 'Mr Free Hugs' at Eurovision'. Eurovision Ireland. Ireland. May 16, 2015.
44. ^'Ukraine wins Eurovision with political and powerful song'. The Irish Times. Ireland. May 14, 2016.
45. ^'Eurovision 2016 Diary'. BBC. England. May 14, 2016.
46. ^Grinberg, Emanuella (December 1, 2014). 'Story behind the hug between cop, boy at Ferguson rally - CNN.com'. CNN. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
47. ^Harrington, Rebecca (September 23, 2016). 'A protester in Charlotte gave out free hugs to police in riot gear — and they were incredibly grateful'. Business Insider. Retrieved 24 September 2016.

External links[edit]

Media related to Free Hugs at Wikimedia Commons

• The Illustrated Guide to Free Hugs at the Wayback Machine (archived August 22, 2008)
• The Illustrated Guide to Free Hugs, still online for free available via Scribd, visited 31.10.2013
• The Illustrated Guide to Free Hugs, still online for free available as pdf, visited 08.12.2013
• Original Free Hugs video on YouTube