Category: Uncategorized

Media Release: 

Assange must be released to his family
In the time of COVID, this is a matter of life and death

On the twelve-month anniversary of the release of the US superseding indictment, we call on the Australian government to make diplomatic representations to the US and UK and have Julian Assange released to his family. The US extradition hearing is set to commence on the 7 September 2020 due to the Covid epidemic, unreasonably extending Assange’s time in detention to 18 months. Assange is not serving time as a convicted prisoner.

Julian’s father, John Shipton, stated “Julian misses Stella and their kids. He just wants to come home and be with his family. These governments aren’t just punishing Julian for exposing their crimes against humanity, they are pushing us as a family. We are all suffering.”

Australian Assange Campaign adviser, Greg Barns SC said “Given his health conditions, it is reasonable for the family to request that the Australian government make diplomatic representations to ensure Julian is released and safe with his family. This is a matter of life and death and there is a duty of care for any detaining authority to ensure the safety of prisoners and access to adequate medical care – Belmarsh is unable to provide this.”

“Julian is not serving time as a convicted prisoner, there is no valid reason why he can’t be released to his family for the duration of the extradition hearing” Barns said.

Craig Tuck, head of LawAid International Chambers added “the due process violations in this case are extensive. This is not about applying the law. Julian is not being given a fair chance to defend himself.”

Assange’s legal representatives have confirmed that communications with their client have become even more difficult since commencement of the Covid epidemic. Speaking at a recent hearing, Edward Fitzgerald QC, said ‘We’ve had great difficulties in getting into Belmarsh to take instructions from Mr Assange and to discuss the evidence with him.’ Mr Fitzgerald continued: ‘We simply cannot get in as we require to see Mr Assange and to take his instruction.’

Julian Assange is facing 175 years in a US prison for allegedly publishing evidence of US war crimes. 

Media contact: 
Greg Barns SC +61419691846
Both Mr Barns SC and Mr John Shipton are available for interview.

On the 11th May 2020, Mads Andenas, former UN special rapporteur on arbitrary detention and the chair of UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, reports

“They have a duty to maintain, to defend (Assange‘s) rights against arbitrary detention, against torture and a duty to set the bar particularly high in this individual case because Freedom Of Expression is involved.”

On the 4th May 2020, Julie Furlong sent this article to the Australian Assange Campaign. The article was written for  #Campaign Outline as contribution to the UN’s Press Freedom Day 

Google Translation

The professional ethics of WikiLeaks CEO Julian Assange has been able to arouse the real conviction towards a safe, faithfully informed life path that axiomatically leads to continual renewal. It has recreated in the global citizen the will to want and be able to be responsible for their participation in the world of which they are a part.

Faced with the entry of a new era and culture that begins the history of humanity, the authorship in press of the best journalist in the world, boasted with innumerable international recognitions, has allowed the world citizen to safeguard its already assimilated ethics, thus innovating the work of a reforming journalism. Burying the old ways of doing journalism with flawed behavior that condemns the new Age of man.

The British judgment that tries to be as such, applied by England martyring the life of Julian Assange, does not aspire to continue being a rule of conduct, it has no similarity with logical rules of legal thought. The correctness of thinking globally in legal matters depends absolutely on logic, as the judicial function must be when applied.
The interpretation of law, to clarify the sense in which it should be applied, is also a strictly logical mental operation.

It denigrates world society, seeing a country of supposed 1st. World, applying retrograde justice in the trial of the Julian Assange, under a profoundly pernicious and controversial climate in absolute social deterioration. All judgment must be tempered in the crucible of formal logic, which occupy the laws of thought, especially those of reasoning.

The fine tact required by those who exercise the profession of Jury, Judge or Prosecutor in the trial of the digital Icon of the current Era, a very high level of importance for the rest of the world, can only be applied by mastering logic, since it is the Legal Axiology that includes the study of the supreme values ​​of law.

Given WikiLeaks’ ethics, already considered of innovative value in times of instability and continental catastrophes, its objective in the field of professional practice has been, above all, under moral standards founded on truth, honesty and honor.

The forms of journalism until the twentieth century that had served the most competent journalists and hundreds of media outlets are today in rusty expiration.

Axiological ethics, a set of norms originated in the journalism of Julian Assange, has led the world to prior reflection on false values ​​imposed centuries ago. supported by truth, in the reason of world morality, changing paradigms worthy of the new culture of humanity. Deontologically, the codes and norms that support the truth are the concrete-future path already begun by Julian Assange, in the vertical formation of new communicators. Thus, Julian Assange inevitably sheds new light on universal principles, renewing cultural paradigms that stand out as the backbone of Ethical-Professional-Moral and virtuous in journalism of the new human culture, already begun in the XXI century.

Only by virtue of the condition of Human Being, by axiom does Julian Assange have an absolute right to have his life respected, especially that which violates universal laws. No consideration of totalitarian order, social or judicial tyranny, much less outside his national territory, justifies torturing him psychologically, and continually inciting him to death for revenge – political favor – personal convenience – or simply for the enjoyment of brutality.

Without committing any crime, beyond telling the truth, above all living being in Globo Terraquio_ Respect for the life of Julian Assange prevails, which bases his rights to live without brutal siege and in full freedom.

Julie Furlong

Original in Spanish

La ética profesional del CEO de WikiLeaks Julian Assange ha sido capaz de originar la convicción real hacia un seguro camino de vida, fidedignamente informada que lleva axiomáticamente continua renovación. Ha recreado en el ciudadano global la voluntad de querer y poder ser responsable de su participación en el mundo del que forma parte.

Ante la entrada de una nueva Era y cultura que inicia la historia de la humanidad, la autoría en prensa del mejor periodista del mundo, vanagloriado con innumerables reconocimientos internacionales, ha permitido al ciudadano mundial salvaguardar su ética ya asimilada, innovando así el quehacer de un periodismo reformador. Enterrando las añejadas formas de hacer periodismo con viciadas conductas que condena la nueva Era del hombre.

El juicio británico que intenta serlo como tal, aplicado por Inglaterra martirizando la vida de Julian Assange, no aspira siguiera a ser una regla de conducta, no tiene similitud alguna con reglas lógicas del pensamiento jurídico. Lo correcto de pensar global en materia legal, depende absolutamente de la lógica, como ha de serlo la función judicial al aplicarse.
La interpretación de ley, para esclarecer el sentido en que debe ser aplicada, es también una operación mental rigurosamente lógica.

Denigra a la sociedad mundial, el ver a uno país de supuesto 1er. Mundo, aplicando una justicia retrógrada en el juicio del Julian Assange, bajo un clima profundamente pernicioso y controversial en absoluto deterioro social. Todo juicio se debe templar en el crisol de la lógica formal, que ocupan las leyes del pensamiento, en especial las del raciocinio.

El fino tacto que requieren tener quienes ejercen la profesión de Jurado, Juez o Fiscal en el juicio al Icono digital de la Era actual, altísimo nivel de importancia para el resto del mundo., sólo puede ser aplicado mediante el dominio de la lógica, pues es la Axiología Jurídica que comprende el estudio de los valores supremos del derecho.

Ante la ética de WikiLeaks, ya considerada de valor innovador en tiempos de inestabilidades y catástrofes continentales, su objetivo en el terreno de la práctica profesional ha sido ante todo, bajo normas morales fundadas en la verdad, la honradez y el honor.

Las formas de hacer periodismo hasta el siglo XX que hubo servido a los periodistas más competentes y a cientos de medios de información, hoy se encuentran en oxidada caducidad.

La ética axiológica, conjunto de normas originadas en el periodismo de Julian Assange, ha conducido al mundo hacia la reflexión previa sobre falsos valores impuestos siglos ha., pues está
apoyada en la verdad, en la razón de la moral mundial, cambiando paradigmas dignos de la nueva cultura de la humanidad.
Deontológicamente los códigos y las normas que fundamentan la verdad son el camino concreto- futural ya iniciado por Julian Assange, en la formación vertical de los nuevos comunicadores.
Es así que Julian Assange insoslayablemente da nueva luz a principios universales, renovando paradigmas culturales que se pronuncian como la espina dorsal de la Ética-Profesional-Moral y virtuosa en el periodismo de la nueva cultura humana, ya iniciada en siglo XXI.

Sólo por virtud de la condición de Ser Humano, por axioma Julian Assange tiene absoluto derecho a que se respete su vida, sobre todo aquello que infringe las leyes universales. Ninguna consideración de orden totalitarismo, tiranismo social o judicial, mucho menos fuera de su territorio nacional, justifica torturarlo psicológicamente, e incitarlo por años continuamente a la muerte por venganza- favor político- conveniencia personal- o simplemente por disfrute de la brutalidad.

Sin cometer crimen alguno, más allá de decir la verdad, ante todo ser viviente en Globo Terraquio_Impera el respeto a la vida de Julian Assange que fundamenta sus derechos a vivir sin asedio brutal y en plena libertad.

Julie Furlong

Hosted by 
Stop the War Coalition and 
Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition

Register here: https://cutt.ly/4ydH0r8

Speakers:
Renata Avila – Wikileaks legal team
Tim Dawson – National Union of Journalists
John Rees – Stop the War Coalition
John Shipton – anti-war activist and Julian Assange’s father

Julian Assange is fighting extradition to the US where he faces 175 years in prison for espionage. His crime? Publishing evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite having served his sentence for violating bail and despite the danger of Covid-19 the torture of Assange in Belmarsh High Security Prison continues. The hearing set for 18 May has been postponed – possibly until November – due to the coronavirus lockdown. Under current conditions Assange is unable to prepare his defence and his life is at risk.

The Assange case is an attack not just on an individual but on press freedom. Journalism is not a crime.

Organised by Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition

References: Stop The War Coalition

On the 2nd May 2020, Stella Morris writes

I want my children to believe that inequitable treatment is not tolerated in mature democracies

The life of my partner, Julian Assange, is at severe risk. He is on remand at HMP Belmarsh, and Covid-19 is spreading within its walls.

Julian and I have two little boys. Since becoming a mother, I have been reflecting on my own childhood.

My parents are European, but when I was little we lived in Botswana, five miles from the border with Apartheid South Africa. Many of my parents’ friends came from across the border: writers, painters, conscientious objectors. It was an unlikely centre for artistic creativity and intellectual exchange.

The history books describe Apartheid as institutional segregation, but it was much more than that. Segregation occurred in broad daylight. The abductions, torture and killings occurred at night.We were totally exposed. These forces operated in a legal and ethical vacuum that engulfed us

The foundations of the Apartheid system were precarious, so the regime met ideas of political reform with live ammunition. In June 1985, South African assassination squads crossed the border armed with machine guns, mortars and grenades. As soon as gunfire burst into the night, my parents wrapped me in a blanket. I slept as my parents raced the car to safety. The sound of explosions carried through the capital for the hour and a half that it took to kill twelve people.

The first person to be killed was a very close family friend, an exceptional painter. South Africa claimed the raid had targeted the armed wing of the ANC, but in reality most of the victims were innocent civilians and children killed as they lay sleeping in bed. We left Botswana within days.

I have absorbed my parents’ vivid memories of the raid. If that terrible night shaped my perspective of the world, the incarceration of the father of my children will surely mark theirs.

Forming a family with Julian under the circumstances was always going to be difficult, but our hopes eclipsed our fears. Initially, Julian and I managed to carve out a space for a private life. Our firstborn visited with the help of a friend. But when Gabriel was six months old, an embassy security contractor confessed to me that he had been told to steal the baby’s DNA through a nappy. Failing that they would take the baby’s pacifier. The whistleblower warned me Gabriel should not come into the embassy anymore. It was not safe. I realised that all the precautions I had taken, from piling layers on to disguise my bump to changing my name, would not protect us. We were totally exposed. These forces operated in a legal and ethical vacuum that engulfed us.A police raid at the security company director’s home turned up two handguns with their serial numbers filed off

I could write volumes about what happened in the months that followed. By the time I was pregnant with Max the pressure and harassment had become unbearable and I feared that my pregnancy was at risk. When I was six months pregnant Julian and I decided I should stop going into the embassy. The next time I saw him was in Belmarsh prison.

The image of Julian being carried out of the embassy shocked many. It struck a blow to my chest, but it did not shock me. What happened that morning was an extension of what had been going on inside the embassy over an eighteen-month period.

After Julian was arrested a year ago, Spain’s High Court opened an investigation into the security company that had been operating inside the embassy. Several whistleblowers came forward and have informed law enforcement of unlawful activities against Julian and his lawyers, both inside and outside the embassy. They are cooperating with law enforcement and have provided investigators with large amounts of data.

The investigation has revealed that the company had been moonlighting for a US company closely associated with the current US administration and US intelligence agencies and that the increasingly disturbing instructions, such as following my mother or the baby DNA directive, had come from their US client, not Ecuador. Around the same time that I had been approached about the targeting of our baby, the company was thrashing out even more sinister plans concerning Julian’s life. Their alleged plots to poison or abduct Julian have been raised in UK extradition proceedings. A police raid at the security company director’s home turned up two handguns with their serial numbers filed off.

None of this information is surprising to me but as a parent I ponder how to manage it.

I want our children to grow up with the clarity of conviction that I had as a little girl. Peril lay beyond the South African border. I want them to believe that inequitable treatment is not tolerated in mature democracies. At university in Oxford, I was proud to be at the intellectual heart of the most mature democracy of them all.

It is not just our family who suffers from the infringement of Julian’s rights. If our family and Julian’s lawyers are not off-limits, then nothing is. The person responsible for allegedly ordering the theft of Gabriel’s DNA is Mike Pompeo, who last month threatened the family members of lawyers working at the International Criminal Court. Why? Because the court had had the temerity to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The same crimes that Julian exposed through WikiLeaks, and which the US wants to imprison him over.

Julian needs to be released now. For him, for our family, and for the society we all want our children to grow up in.

Stella Moris is a lawyer and the sentimental partner of Julian Assange.

Read original article in (English) El Pais

On the 28th April 2020, Guy Rundle reports

The Wikileaks leader is threatened with a torturous 175-year sentence for practicing journalism. This needs a new level of opposition. If not now, when?

Now is the time, if ever there was a time, for prominent Australians, especially those on the right, who support Julian Assange, to take their defence of him up a gear.

The Wikileaks founder, currently on remand in London’s Belmarsh prison, has just had a full hearing of his refusal of extradition to the US delayed for months — possibly until November — because preparation of a defence has been impossible due to COVID-19 restrictions. 

Assange has been unable to meet directly with his lawyers, videolinks for court hearings make due process more or less impossible, and lawyers have been unable to interview witnesses.

The court granted the extension. They had little choice. Assange is facing up to 175 years thanks to the US’s absurd draconian sentencing system, on a charge of espionage which revolves around the allegations that he gave another person (presumed to be Chelsea Manning) some informational advice as to how to bypass passwords on locked files.

The British state and judiciary would have loved to rush Assange through to a military rendition flight in orange jump suit and shackles. Paradoxically, it’s the theatrical-but-real severity of the potential US sentence that has made it impossible for the British state to hustle Assange away — since the sentence amounts to a virtual entombment for life in a US supermax prison. 

Such sentences are designed to instil the pure terror of the death penalty in those who go against the US state, while avoiding the UK and other countries’ ban on deportation in death penalty cases.

COVID-19 has given Assange and his team no alternative but to request a delay, despite the fact that this puts Assange’s health in further danger, as he has a lung condition which counts as a major comorbidity for the disease.

The deep disquiet around the treatment of Assange, and the very nature of the charges against him, has been growing in Australia and around the world for some time. 

Even those who have never agreed with many of the actions of Wikileaks, and especially of its conduct during the 2016 US election, have come to realise that this is a brutal and state-dictatorial attack on the basic practice of journalism.

Assange, a non-US citizen, working outside of US soil, is not accused of physical theft of anything, nor of computer hacking; he is accused, under the Espionage Act, of exchanging information with a whistleblower who had already taken electronic information from their military workplace, and needed to access it.

Potentially any journalist who renders active assistance to a whistleblower — from helping them open a locked briefcase, to giving them advice as to how to get a paper file out of a workplace, or even to simply encouraging them to leak — could now be swept up under this new, global extension of a law introduced in WWI (a law aimed at anti-war activists as much as at German spies).

The sheer exercise of the pure, annihilating power of the state is on display here. It is the rare moment, when the US-UK Atlantic alliance is so desperate to punish a new level of openness — created by the Wikileaks cablegate exposes of 2010-11 — that it is willing to unveil the exceptional power behind the facade of actually existing democracy. 

At a time when news media is in dire straits, and much of the spirit of critical journalism has died in the era of “content production”, such an exercise in brute power is designed to scare thousands of everyday journalists, who might otherwise be willing to undertake investigative work, into turning their attention back to TV recaps and lifestyle features. 

The terror of the supermax prison is the terror at the heart of modernity: not that of physical torture and death, but of being flung into lifelong solitary confinement in a bare room, with virtually no human contact, the lights burning 24/7, books and other media strictly limited. 

Because it is not a dungeon or an arctic circle work-gulag, US authorities can claim it as “humane containment”. It isn’t. It’s a system designed to be a living hell by other means, and in that respect it is no different from a gulag or the interment of political prisoners in somewhere like Dachau.

Australia’s prominent figures who oppose this now have to stand up and make an extra effort to represent a widespread national disquiet on the world stage. 

Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd (and Gillard and Albanese if they will, which I doubt) need to make a joint press conference to ramp up the opposition to this. 

Turnbull was a champion (for hire) of openness towards Western spying operations; Rudd is a follower of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian pastor who was executed for his role in plans to assassinate Hitler. They cannot, if they have any consistency, not make this a major focus. It’s now not enough for such people to sign a petition, make the occasional remark. 

Barnaby Joyce and George Christensen, as the right-wing MPs most prominent (for whatever mix of motives) in the campaign to release Assange, have a responsibility to ramp it up too. 

The left MPs in this movement will do so, but it is the right, talking in terms of solidarity with Australian nationals, and not deserting them in a London cell, that will start to put the squeeze on the Morrison government. Ideally, the National Party and the Greens need to make a joint statement, and, yes, another joint press conference.

The immediate aim is to get Assange out of remand — his time for breaching bail has been served; he is guilty of no crime — and at the very least, into a facility that is equal to outside living in terms of his health. 

The aim over the rest of this year is to have the Australian government oppose the threat of torturous lifelong incarceration, and for pressure on the UK government to refuse extradition. 

The media campaign needs a ramp up too — but so many journalists have been so cowardly, stupid and predictably disappointing on this matter, that a focus on figures actually wielding power becomes the proximate focus.

It’s worth remembering that the pursuit of Assange is being conducted by a US right-wing government that is effectively leaderless, shambolic and opportunistic. 

What of future right-wing US administrations that were of this intent, but focused, efficient, and determined to wipe out critical scrutiny of the US across the world? “First they came for Wikileaks…”, to paraphrase another resistant German pastor. 

The delay in Assange’s hearing is both a respite, but also a further threat to his health. There can’t be any delay in the campaign to free him. The time for a new level of action, from those with the profile to make their voices heard, is now, right now, no other time than now.

Read original article (and hopefully donate) in Crikey

On the 20th April 2020 Reporters Without Boarders reports

The UK has dropped two places to 35th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF’s) 2020 World Press Freedom Index, published today. Although the UK government played a key role in promoting media freedom globally, its efforts were undermined by domestic developments, including the murder of Lyra McKee and active threats to the safety of journalists in Northern Ireland, and the detention of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who faces possible extradition to the US.

. . .

Read article in Reporters Without Boarders

BBC Lyra McKee: Man charged with journalist’s murder

On the 23rd April, Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept interviews the international human rights lawyer Jen Robinson and Washington Post’s media reporter Margaret Sullivan

THE U.S. MEDIA HAS SPENT almost four full years loudly proclaiming its own devotion to defending press freedoms from any assaults by the Trump administration. And yet, with a few noble exceptions, they have largely ignored what is, by far, the single greatest attack on press freedoms by the U.S. Government in the last decade at least: the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange for alleged crimes arising out of WikiLeaks’ 2010 award-winning publication — in conjunction with the world’s largest newspapers — of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and U.S diplomatic cables.

…

Read more in the Intercept

On 13th April George Christensen MP talks on home detention in light of covid-19 conditions in UK

On 16th December 2019, Andrew Wilkie MP talks about motivations