Month: February 2021

On the 23rd February 2021, AAPT reports

Anthony Albanese has thrown his support behind releasing Julian Assange from prison after 10 years without freedom.

The Labor leader was asked at a caucus meeting in Canberra on Tuesday for his view on the ongoing detention of the Australian WikiLeaks founder.

“Enough is enough,” he responded.

“I don’t have sympathy for many of his actions but essentially I can’t see what is served by keeping him incarcerated.”

Read full article in 7 News

From the 15th April 2020, Anthony Albanese expresses his support for Press Freedom

Journalism isn't a crime – and journalists shouldn't be prosecuted for just doing their jobs.

Labor will always defend press freedom. pic.twitter.com/OgzFh5dkBu

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) April 15, 2020

Last Updated 6th January 2021, Lawyer and Human Rights Activist Kellie Tranter, collates a chronology

Editor’s Note: Copied 17th February 2020 as a backup and to integrate with this sites text search

11.4.19

‘He has remained on an ACCT, the care planning process for prisoners identified as being at risk of suicide or self-harm, since his arrival at HMP Belmarsh [paragraph 345 Baraitser’s judgement].

12.4.19    

Australian High Commission correspondence to HMP Belmarsh.

12.4.19

Consul & Consular officer visit Assange at HMP Belmarsh

12.4.19 

DFAT report on visit to Assange in Belmarsh includes statement that ‘Prior to meeting with Mr Assange, consular officers met briefly with an Assistant Governor who advised Mr Assange was undergoing a mental health assessment as part of a prison induction.  The assistant governor confirmed they had noimmediate concerns about his welfare, and were conducting an assessment as a matter of course.

18.4.19  

Australian High Commission correspondence to HMP Belmarsh, regarding medical regime, specifically dental issues.

18.4.19

Letter from the Australian High Commission to Gareth Peirce. ‘…Mr Assange has provided our office with consent to discuss with you matters relating to his arrest and detention in HMP Belmarsh. My colleague and I met with Mr Assange last Friday to discuss his situation and the provision of consular assistance. In that meeting Mr Assange asked us to raise his dental issues with prison authorities, which we have done and are awaiting a response from the prison Governor.  Mr Assange also requested we make enquiries with contacts from the Ecuadorian Embassy regarding the whereabouts of his personal belongings, which we have also done and we are awaiting a response.  Once those responses have been received we will forward them to you for onforwarding to Mr Assange…can you please confirm that you have access to speak with Mr Assange? If not, we can also raise this with the HMP Belmarsh Governor.

18.4.19

Email from Gareth Peirce to Australian High Commission. ‘….I am grateful for the information as to the issues you have raised with the Ecuadorian Embassy and Belmarsh prison.  Both are urgent. Extraordinarily we have no response from the Embassy since the afternoon of Mr Assange’s arrest in relation to the return of confidential material including privileged legal and medical papers as well as Mr Assange’s possessions generally. Neither does the Embassy’s telephone nor do emails respond and on any rare connection with an actual person we are simply told the Embassy is closed.  We have sent two letters by post the second by recorded delivery.  It is obviously important that these questions be responded to-where are Mr Assange’s possessions, how are they being preserved for a swift return and why are we, long on record as his lawyers in the United Kingdom not having any response? The second issue – urgent need of dental treatment for an acute crisis – an infected root canal, which can produce life threatening consequences in the (very likely) event that the infection spreads – had not been attended to when a solicitor from this office was able for the first time to achieve a videolink conference with Mr Assange, a less than satisfactory means of communication but via which this essential information could be ascertained. In addition to raising the particular concern about urgent need for him to be seen by a dentist, we would welcome your intervention in relation to the current regime under which he is being held -of isolation in a single cell for 23 hours a day.  We are aware that Mr Assange is already affected by the years spent in the Embassy. Not only ought he as a matter of entitlement to have access to at least several hours of association with others each day as well as fresh air and exercise, but their absence in his particular case will compound what we know to be a fragile state of health, mental and physical. May I thank you for your inquiry. We have not yet had any in person legal visit and the earliest such a visit is offered by Belmarsh is next Friday, more than 2 weeks after Mr Assange’s arrest…..

5.5.19   

From Baraitser’s judgement.  Half of a razor blade was found in his cell, inside a cupboard and concealed under some underwear.

8.5.19  

Australian High Commission correspondence to HMP Belmarsh, following up on letter of 18 April re medical regime.

9.5.19            

Nils Melzer visited Assange with two medical experts to run the Istanbul Protocol.

13.5.19

Email from the First Secretary & Consul Australian High Commission to Gareth Peirce.  The High Commissioner has today received a response from the Ambassador of Ecuador to the UK.  In his response the Ambassador advises that all material documents and objects left by Mr Assange in the Embassy are currently under the authority and jurisdiction of the Judicial System of the Republic of Ecuador. As we are unable to intervene in another country’s legal matters we are unable to take this matter any further and refer the matter to you as Mr Assange’s legal representatives.

17.5.19        

DFAT report following visit to Assange….Assange expressed concern about surviving the current process and fears that he would die if taken to the United States…..Consular officers noticed that he had appeared to have lost weight….Assange stated he had not been able to eat for a long period and was now only eating small amounts of food….

18.5.19              

From Baraitser’s  judgement.  ACCT review carried out at 2.30 pm on 18.5.19. Admission to health care wing.  Assange finding it hard to control his thoughts of self-harm and suicide.

19.5.19               

From Baraitser’s judgement. ACCT review stated Assange was finding it hard to control thoughts of self-harm and suicide.  In the healthcare wing, concerns about his health and his suicidality led to a plan for him to be monitored with observations and nocturnal checks.

20.5.19        

Redacted entry in Assange consular file.

30.5.19      

Assange consular file.  DFAT entry includes Statement from Wikileaks announcing grave concerns about the health of Assange.

30.5.19   

Cable from Canberra to London (consular file). Wikileaks has tweeted today that Assange has been moved to the health ward and this it holds ‘grave concerns’ for his health.  Grateful post contact the prison and attempt to ascertain the veracity of the report and obtain an update on his health and well being.

31.5.19

Australian High Commission correspondence to HMP Belmarsh, following up on letters of 18 April  and 7 May re medical regime and seeking updates on media reporting of transfer to medical ward.

31.5.19               

Nils Melzer – Assange is suffering from psychological torture

31.5.19       

DFAT Statement rejecting suggestion by Melzer that the Government is complicit in psychological torture or has shown a lack of consular support for Assange….We are confident that Assange is being treated appropriately in Belmarsh prison….

6.6.19  

Emails to UK Ministry of Justice from the Australian High Commission, re lack of response from HMP Belmarsh.

14.6.19               

Consent allegedly withdrawn for release of information to the Australian High Commission.

15.6.19

Letter from Ministry of Justice advising Mr Assange has withdrawn consent for HMP Belmarsh to provide information to Post.

22.6.19

2019 Consular file. Letter received from HMP BELMARSH – [redaction]. Name of Attachment 42 redacted.

25.6.19

Letter to Assange offering consular visit.

26.6.19

2019 Consular file entry. ‘Correspondence received’. Attachment ‘HMP Belmarsh Medical.pdf’

31.7.19

Letter to Assange offering consular visit.

8.8.19     

Assange Consular file.  Mr Shipton advised conops that he learnt overnight that Assange was admitted to the prison sick bay and that Greg Barnes (Australian lawyer) is in the process of writing a letter to the Foreign Minister requesting that DFAT use its diplomatic sources to seek an independent medical assessment (ie outside the prison).

12.8.19  

Assange consular file. Cable No. ‘Urgent – Julian Assange Declining Health DLMF or Official Use Only’.

19.8.19   

Assange Consular file. During the telephone conversation, Mr Shipton advised Conops that Assange’s brother, Gabriel, had recently visited Assange at HMP Belmarsh and was distressed at his ‘deteriorating condition’. Mr Shipton further advised that Gabriel had since written to the Governor General and Prime Minister to raise his concern.

30.8.19

Letter to Assange offering consular visit.

1.10.19

Letter to Assange offering consular visit.

15.10.19

Assange consular file.  Email to Robinson regarding lack of response from Mr Assange and inability to seek updates due to privacy constraints.

16.10.19         

Assange Consular file.  Consul advised that HMP Belmarsh does not have Assange’s permission to update post on his medical condition and without visiting Assange we are unable to check on his medical treatment and well being or raise any concerns with prison authorities.

21.10.19             

DFAT report of court proceedings made no mention of weight loss or Assange’s ability to state his name or date of birth, which was wide reported.

?24.10.19

DFAT’s Andrew Todd advised Senate Estimates that on 14 June 2019 Assange had withdrawn consent for the release of information to the High Commission

24.10.19

Assange consular file. Letter from Gareth Peirce to Australian High Commission [detailed and long] but includes ‘It may in these circumstances not be surprising that Mr Assange has not authorised HMP Belmarsh to provide information regarding his “medical treatment”; he is a person whose medical treatment has been grossly and unlawfully compromised over some time, including, disturbingly, even whilst he has been in Belmarsh prison, false information on at least one occasion having been provided to the press by very obviously internal sources.  He is entitled to confidentiality of such medical treatment as he may be given in prison or elsewhere….your comments to Ms Robinson that he has not responded to letters of course needs the whole of picture, for the most part freely accessible and already in the public domain, to be seen….We do not know whether any member of the Consulate attended the hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court earlier this week on 21 October 2019. If so they will have undoubtedly noted what was clear for everyone present in court to observe (and was reported by the majority of press present) that Mr Assange is in shockingly poor condition and that he, a person of high intelligence, is struggling not only to cope but to articulate what he wishes to articulate…..We hope that what we are able to say as Mr Assange’s lawyers will be accepted by you as having been based on close observation, including by independent professional clinicians. At present, every professional warning provided to the prison, including by at least one independent doctor called in by Belmarsh, has been ignored….Insofar as it is possible for the Australian government to take action on Mr Assange’s behalf, then this would be welcomed. As indicated previously, we would ourselves be pleased to meet with you at any stage if by intervention in on what is now an impending crisis, you can contribute to its amelioration and avoidance….’

26.10.19

Assange consular file.  Post has received a letter from Gareth Peirce..in response to post’s letter of 15 October 2019…regarding our offers of consular visits to Assange at HMP Belmarsh. The letter sets out the varied reasons why Assange has not responded to post’s offers and emphasises urgency of action on Assange’s behalf. In particular, Peirce refers to alleged breaches of legal privilege, (including surveillance of Assange’s communications and meetings with lawyers and doctors), and false information provided to the media from internal sources at HMP Belmarsh. Peirce suggests these are contributing factors to Assange’s unwillingness to provide consent for prison authorities to discuss his situation with post. The letter refers to Assange’s physical and mental constitution as ‘significantly weakened’ and states he lacks the capacity to engage with more than he is at the moment able.’ Peirce goes on to ask that the Australian Government ‘takes this communication’ as confirmation of an urgent basis on which to take action on Assange’s behalf.

1.11.19       

Assange consular file. DFAT visit to Assange in Belmarsh. Assange stated that he is concerned about false reports from DFAT in the media that he has rejected post’s offers of consular visits. He said that Marise Payne has also released false statements to the media that he is being treated like everyone else.  Consul advised that the issue of consular visits was raised during Senate Estimates and the department responded that the post has made four offers of consular visits that have not been responded to, however the media reported Assange had blocked consular visits…Assange stated he was suffering from sensory deprivation and that he was dying. He said that his psychological state was so bad that his mind was shutting down. Consul asked when he had last seen a doctor.  Assange replied he had seen a doctor yesterday who was concerned about his condition. Consul advised that in order to raise these issues with the prison authorities Assange would need to provide consent to HMP Belmarsh to discuss his situation with post.  Assange said he had never provided consent nor declined it.  He added that he did recall seeing something about DFAT asking to see his medical files which he had refused.  Consul replied that we had never asked to see medical files but we had written to Belmarsh on three separate occasions and followed up with the Ministry of Justice…Assange stated the isolated prison regime made it difficult for him to think or to prepare his defence.  He said he had no access to a PC, he has no pen and therefore cannot write or do any research to prepare his defence. He said he is unable to receive any documents during his legal visits. Consul confirmed that the legal documents are able to be mailed to him.  Assange confirmed that this is true, however 100% of his mail is read before it is given to him, and that documents have previously been delivered after his Court appearance…..Assange thanked post for our ongoing concerns and visit and undertook to discuss consent with prison authorities.

28.11.19       

Assange consular file. Letter from Australian High Commission to Assange. As we discussed in my most recent visit to you on 1 November 2019 of particular concern to us is the matter of your health and well being. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss these matters with you in more detail. Should you provide the appropriate consent for prison authorities to engage with us, we can raise concerns regarding your health concerns, welfare and detention within the prison system, with HMP Belmarsh. If you consider it appropriate, we can approach HMP Belmarsh and offer our assistance to seek an independent health assessment for you.  This would highlight any medical conditions and provide a sound basis for further discussion with prison authorities. Any findings from the health assessment would be subject to all applicable privacy and medical privileges. If you would kindly indicate on the attached form whether you would like us to progress arrangements for a visit, we have enclosed a stamped, self-addressed envelope to assist you to return it to our office….

29.11.19    

Assange consular file classified cable dated 28.11.19.

December 2019

From Baraitser’s judgement. Staff recorded him sleeping under this bed as he did not hallucinate if he slept there.

December 2019    

From Baraitser’s judgement.  Depression severe in December 2019

December 2019

From Baraitser’s judgement. At the time of his December 2019 report, Professor Kopelman diagnosed Assange with a recurrent depressive disorder, which was severe in December 2019 and sometimes accompanied by psychotic features (hallucinations) and often with ruminative suicidal ideas….His symptoms in December 2019 included loss of sleep, loss of weight, impaired concentration and feeling of often being on the verge of tears, and a state of acute agitation in which he was pacing his cell until exhausted, punching his head or banging it against a cell wall. Assange reported suicidal ideas during this period, telling Professor Kopelman that life wasn’t worth living that he had been thinking about suicide “hundreds of times a day” and had a “constant desire” to self harm or commit suicide.  He told Professor Kopelman that he had called th Samaritans virtually every night and on 2-3 occasions when they had not been available had made superficial cuts to his thigh and abdomen to distract him from his sense of isolation…..

5.12.19        

Classified cable in consular file.

16.12.19   

Letter to Marise Payne sent from Doctors for Assange ‘Medical Emergency – Mr Julian Assange’

21.12.19   

From Baraitser’s judgement. Assange returned to ordinary [prison] location.

31.12.19

Email to Assange’s father in consular file.  We were advised by the Ministry of Justice (by letter) in June this year that Assange had withdrawn consent for the prison to discuss his situation with the High Commission.  Later in June HMP Prison advised Julian would not sign the consent form to release information to the High Commission.  The High Commission has since written to Julian (with a reply paid envelope) on 5 occasions offering consular assistance. To date there has been no reply.

18.2.20    

Marise Payne’s response to letter from doctors for Assange https://doctorsassange.org/australian-government-reply-to-doctors-for-assange-february-2020/

[From Baraitser’s judgement. His prison medical notes record numerous occasions on which he told the In-Reach prison psychologist, Dr Corson, and other medical staff (for example a prison nurse) that he had suicidal or self-harming thoughts, felt despairing or hopeless and had made plans to end his life. He made frequent requests for access to the prison’s Samaritans phone.]

Read Original collation at Kellie’s web site and other articles about Julian Assange

On the 11th February 2020, Claire Daly, Irish MEP, addresses the European Parliament

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my censorship are greatly exaggerated. If the below is being tagged as "sensitive content" by Twitter, well that says a lot about the sensitivities of some people. In any case, you can watch it on the EP website: https://t.co/0sAWtdnwrh pic.twitter.com/WoPqeWH9gC

— Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP) February 10, 2021

Nalvany is a vicious anti-immigration racist on maybe 4% of the population support rallying support of hundreds or thousands in cities with populations of millions. We would not be discussing if not raised in Russia. Meanwhile Julian Assange has been incarcerated for almost ten years and we cannot mention his name. Tomorrow, Pablo Hasél, a Catalan rapper, is going to prison for his lyrics. Where are the sanctions against Spain. Meanwhile tomorrow Clare Grady, a 62 year old from West Virginia is going to prison for 21 years for her non violent plowshare protest agains Trident submarines. Where are demands to break off links with the US. .. .

Read more in RT News interview with Claire

On the 9th February 2020 Mark Hosenball reports

President Joe Biden’s administration plans to continue to seek to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States to face hacking conspiracy charges, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi on Tuesday said the U.S. government will continue to challenge a British judge’s ruling last month that Assange should not be extradited to the United States because of the risk he would commit suicide.

In a Jan. 4 ruling, the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, said, “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”

The British judge set Friday [12th February] as a deadline for the United States to appeal her ruling forbidding Assange’s extradition.

Raimondi said the United States will challenge Baraitser’s ruling. “We continue to seek his extradition.”

WikiLeaks drew fury from the U.S. government after publishing thousands of pages of once-secret reports and documents generated by American military and intelligence agencies, including detailed descriptions of CIA hacking capabilities. WikiLeaks also published emails hacked from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a key adviser, which Clinton and some of her supporters say was a factor in her election defeat to Republican Donald Trump.

Debate over possible American moves to seek Assange’s extradition from Britain first arose nearly a decade ago when Barack Obama served as president and Joe Biden as his vice president.

Obama’s Justice Department decided not to seek Assange’s extradition on the grounds that what Assange and WikiLeaks did was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump administration officials stepped up public criticism of Assange and WikiLeaks only weeks after taking office in January 2017 and subsequently filed a series of increasingly harsh criminal charges accusing Assange of participating in a hacking conspiracy.

Assange supporters have been pressing the Biden administration to drop charges against him during Biden’s first 100 days in the White House [ref Press Freedom Coalition Calls on Biden’s Justice Department to Drop the Assange Prosecution]

Read Original Article at Reuters and follow on articles at
RT News
Aljazeera
ShadowProof and
many more

On the 8th February 2020, Parker Higgins posts on behalf of the following two dozen press freedom, civil liberties, and human rights groups in calling on the Biden Administration to drop the prosecution of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

• Access Now
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Amnesty International – USA
• Center for Constitutional Rights
• Committee to Protect Journalists
• Defending Rights and Dissent
• Demand Progress
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Fight for the Future
• First Amendment Coalition
• Free Press
• Freedom of the Press Foundation
• Human Rights Watch
• Index on Censorship
• Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
• National Coalition Against Censorship
• Open The Government
• Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
• PEN America
• Project on Government Oversight
• Reporters Without Borders
• Roots Action
• The Press Freedom Defense Fund of First Look Institute
• Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice must drop its prosecution and extradition appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a letter organized by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and joined by a coalition of two dozen press freedom, civil liberties, and international human rights groups.

ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Knight First Amendment Institute, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders are among the signatories delivering this unified message to the Acting Attorney General.

As the letter states, “While our organizations have different perspectives on Mr. Assange and his organization, we share the view that the government’s indictment of him poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad.” First Amendment experts across the spectrum have long said the indictment of Assange threatens basic press freedom rights of countless journalists around the country. President Biden campaigned on restoring the values of press freedom to the United States, and this is a critically important way for the Justice Department to follow through on that promise.

The Trump administration brought widely-denounced charges under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 2019, culminating in a U.K. extradition trial that ended last month with a decision against the U.S. government. That decision was rendered on the grounds that subjecting Assange to the U.S. prison system would be “oppressive.”

The charges, as we have written previously, are among the most disastrous press freedom issues in the country. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice now has an opportunity and an obligation to end this dangerous charade. As we outline in the letter, the appropriate path forward is to stop pursuing the appeal of the extradition and to drop the charges (and the alarming precedent they could set) entirely. As our coalition letter argues:

The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.

Former President Obama came into office promising the “most transparent administration in history,” but its use of the Espionage Act against journalistic sources left a dark stain on its press freedom legacy. Biden has come into office with similarly lofty rhetoric about the importance of press freedom and the role of journalists. The continuing Assange prosecution is perhaps the first major test of those ideals, and his Department of Justice should act accordingly.

Read the entire coalition letter below, and see a full list of signatories on its final page.

DOJ-letter-Assange

See original article in Freedom of the Press Web Site

In December 2020, Martin Kovan writes

Adjudicating Aberrance
on Assange and the Australian state

The current Australian coalition government, the Labor opposition (notably under former Prime Minister Julia Gillard), and much of the intellectual, cultural and media commentariat has in recent years consistently, consciously and systematically betrayed, not merely an important Australian citizen, but also the very ethos Australians like to imagine is centrally their own: the capacity to adjudicate moral conflict with decency, reason, an attention to facts, and an egalitarian concern with a ‘fair go’ for all antagonists.

We Australians also like to imagine our liberal-democratic politics and polity is imbued with a healthy dose of ‘larrikin’ irreverence towards inflated authority, especially where that authority has proven to be unworthy of respect, let alone reverence. Yet nothing could be further from the truth, and those tired old tropes don’t apply anymore. In the past decade, and especially during Trump’s tenure, that same polity has thrown off that long- cherished self-image, like an outworn illusion. It has chosen to abase itself and its sovereign interests to a foreign power, that is assumed to be justified in arrogating those interests to serve its own. How is this possible? The only answer is that Australia—in its elite political and cultural representatives, as well as the great majority of its public—has lost the courage of its own alleged convictions.

On what grounds can this be asserted? We can take one unarguable example as probative. Most obviously, the national media and commentariat across the ideological spectrum has been more or less willing to ridicule and rue the mendacity, dysfunction and moral perniciousness of Trump and his outgoing administration, but when it comes to that same administration’s persecution of Assange (with its Swedish, British and Ecuadorian enablers), it prefers to keep prudentially mum. Quite literally: the most the few mainstream media outlets engaging the case were willing to extend to even its human rights dimensions were whispers of pusillanimous caution around the right to free speech.

None of the esteemed literary elite of the country said a word. There has been no ‘J’accuse!’ moment in Australia in the last four years because none of our literary writers and public intellectuals has seen fit to dignify it as such. None have stepped up to publicly and unequivocally assert that there might be robust grounds to defend Assange, as an Australian citizen, from unjustified abuse of his person and his reputation. His falsely perceived status as a probable rapist, and his role in the electoral downing of Hillary Clinton in 2016, have it appears warranted the blanket dismissal of any genuine consideration of his own rights of self-defence.

But this only betrays the kind of selective and self-interested morality those same liberal defenders of free speech and the rule of law deplore in flailing democracies or authoritarian states like Hungary, China or Russia. Some Australian commentators of the liberal-democratic left have generously suggested that Assange ought to be excused in some way only because he is apparently autistic, a notion as glibly patronising as it is irrelevant to the gravamen, the moral and legal substance, of the case. This represents a craven failure to live up to their professed standards of the moral defence of liberty undergirding the very possibility of open discourse, freedom from censorship, and their own would-be enlightened cultural practice.

There have, however, been domestic exceptions more broadly—and beyond of course Assange’s own legal counsel in Jennifer Robinson—not least in the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, comprising MPs Andrew Wilkie, George Christensen, and Peter Whish-Wilson among others, as well as media, legal and medical commentators including Phillip Adams, Mark Davis, Mary Kostakidis, Greg Barnes, Dean Yates, Wendy Bacon, Lissa Johnson, and most visibly John Pilger and John Shipton, among few others. These and others have maintained a stalwart resistance to years of disinformation and defamation surrounding Assange’s name. But it’s a minimal chorus, singing from a sinking ship, not merely in moral support of Assange, but in service to that justice that would see a bipartisan consensus reject the Trump administration’s attempts to extradite an Australian citizen, for the reason of his having exercised a legitimate freedom of speech in the public interest.

The same justice would also see the Australian public express justified outrage, rather than limp acquiescence, towards the extraterritorial exceptionalism of American rights of extradition—not merely in the tens or couple of hundreds (at best), but in the tens of thousands. It would see Assange released from British incarceration, possibly by mediation of the Australian attorney-general, and not merely granted bail in order to see out the remainder of a quasi-judicial process that, in the terms of the U.N. Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, has been riddled with prejudicial and undue process.

It would above all see Australia reclaim its national moral integrity. The fact that the Senate in November passed a motion acknowledging Assange’s case is little more than noting damage long after the event. (No corporate media reported it, including the ABC.) It would see that kind of mealy-mouthed leadership as ultimately short-sighted: as in fact complicit with Trump’s four years of leadership that history has already condemned as morally bankrupt, and by extension those who have been willing to enable its multiple abuses of power. But to observe the inert landscape of the national conversation around Assange is to observe a nation that has lost its courage and sense of moral clarity.

What might justify this relative silence? Either the great silent majority consider that there is or might be some justification in the persecution of Assange, or they don’t. If they don’t see the persecution as justified, they betray a gross inconsistency in not including it in the baggy catalogue of Trump’s many moral-legal transgressions, and fail the job of upholding the norms they otherwise take for granted. If they do see the persecution as justified, and they believe there is some intrinsic fault in Assange’s journalistic activities, or even his personal failings, that warrants a full decade of the abuse of his human rights, they fail to clearly and adequately articulate just what this is. Doing so would at the least offer some dignity of reason not merely to Assange in his suffering, but also themselves in pretending to a position of integrity; that is, in a capacity to report the facts and, where possible, come to the right conclusions about them.

It’s important to clarify, again, the context in which this lapse of integrity has occurred. No-one, over the same four years, had any trouble with condemning Trump’s documented sexism, his false accusations in the ‘birther’ controversy, his inflammatory speech prior to and during the BLM movement actions, his hypocritical appeal to Christian values in his heavy-handed treatment of peaceful protest, his ongoing indirect exoneration of American white supremacy, his deception in addressing taxation disclosures, his arbitrary evasion from impeachment, his abject mishandling of the corona-virus, including his wilful manipulation in lying to a vulnerable population in order to sustain a false image of his own authority, resulting in the loss of life of hundreds of thousands of underprivileged Americans, to invoke only some among the headline cases.

But when it comes to a systematic propaganda and disinformation campaign to discredit the personal and professional integrity of Assange, begun by the Obama national security state but vigorously championed and expanded under Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, no-one has anything to say, no critical jokes to crack, not even snidely superior sniggers to make at anyone’s expense—except Assange’s own. This failure of nerve extends to the majority of government itself, for whom Assange is apparently someone of no real account to national honour, to be treated as any citizen might be in any standard diplomatic case. Morrison’s and Payne’s disingenuousness here is of a high, and highly offensive, order.

It’s offensive because instead of defending the rights of an Australian citizen with seriousness and sincerity, in all of our names (and whether we ‘agree’ with everything Assange has done or said), and thereby demonstrate the maturity, independence and sovereignty of our political and diplomatic institutions, both sides of politics in Australia have chosen instead to allow a proven liar, misogynist, and apologist for white supremacy, to determine the appropriate self-representation of a sovereign people and its government. Worse still, the Australian public—excepting those of the half a million signatories to Phillip Adams’ Free Julian Assange change.org campaign—has effectively sanctioned this self-abasement.

What no-one in the national leadership and its various ideological mouthpieces is able to admit to is that in this very process we have proven that we remain America’s accomplice in injustice and international crime, as the recent Brereton Report has demonstrated, and we prove it now most balefully by sacrificing not another Vietnamese farmer, Iraqi merchant, or Afghan villager, but one of the most impressive Australians of recent decades—an original loose-cannon, but one who will be remembered as one of the foundational architects of democratic digital transparency in the Information Age.

Assange will, a century from now, I wager, be thought of in much the same terms as we now consider Voltaire and Diderot, who also did their jail time, but who weren’t crucified thereby, inasmuch as they successfully ushered in an age of enlightenment that we now claim as ours, but insincerely, and in the shallow terms of lip-service by which contemporary liberal democracy is increasingly kissing away its pith and core. The presiding government, and the people it renders impotent under its mediocre rule, will be remembered only for having betrayed Assange in his, and perhaps the nation’s, hour of most critical reckoning.

Of course, Assange and Wikileaks is also convention-breaking, transgressive, and as threatening to entrenched power as anything could be: so unfamiliar, in fact, just because no other institutional or civil power has been able to rise to the challenge as effectively as Wikileaks has. It’s important not to minimise that fact, and deflate its genuine novelty in an asymmetric comparison to corporate journalism as it has been constituted especially since 9/11, when state security began to take precedence over the disclosure of facts concerning the mechanisms of corporate, military and transnational powers exercised with respect to globalising neoliberal interests.

Given these interests, desperate to preserve their immunity from critique, Assange alone has been unsurprisingly framed as the essentially aberrant party (despite an initial flame of establishment endorsement, quickly extinguished). The stages of Assange’s persecution have been legitimated only by virtue of a propaganda campaign that successfully brought much of liberal-democratic opinion under its sway: it took up to a decade to pull off but, as Nils Melzer suggests, it indisputably succeeded.

And we know this is true because it takes no hard looking to see who and what has been the aberrant party all along, and by extension who has fallen foul of its manipulations. It’s for this failing, and not his own, that Assange is paying the price. A further and worse irony is that even if he’s released in the coming time, with a pardon or commutation or even, miraculously, dismissal of the extradition order by the British legal system, it will be too late for those who’ve remained indifferently silent to be exonerated.

Given the continuing fact of Assange’s incarceration in Belmarsh Prison, literally besieged by high levels of coronavirus infection and risking his dying, that failure of exoneration is possibly the best that the Australian polity can hope for. If so, it will be among the most aberrant episodes of a long-troubled national history.