Sunday, May 21, 2023

Stella Assange speaks on the persecution of her husband Julian

Stella Assange is Julian's wife. Hours ago, she spoke to The National Press Club of Australia.



Stella Assange: I think we need to recognise that we are in a much worse situation in terms of press freedom, the public’s right to know, citizens right, than we were in 2010 when WikiLeaks published about the Iraqi and Afghan wars and the publications that Julian is now being prosecuted for.  Those publications, that moment in time, represented probably press freedom at its strongest, internet freedom at its strongest.  And since then we have seen a series of legislative moves across the Five Eyes and elsewhere as well to stop that kind of thing in different ways and also to limit citizens freedoms in different areas.  I think the publication – it was right for the time and Julian was not prosecuted, he was not indicted until 2017.  So, we’re in a much worse position now than we used to be and that is why it is so important to reverse course because it is not just Julian, the implications of this case mean that we are diverging from this protection that used to exist and unless we are just going deeper and deeper into a far removed [place] from where we used to be, from press freedom at its strongest, from our citizens freedom at their strongest and at the same time, it is not just our freedoms that are being limited – it is that the state has become enormously more powerful through surveillance tools and so on.  Our rights as citizens, our rights as the public, we need to defend those because that’s all we have and then of course the ability to speak the truth, to publish the truth is central to that.


THE GUARDIAN quotes her stating:


Australia is the United States most important ally, that is clear. Maybe this was not the case 10 years ago.

It is important to recognise that Australia plays an important role and can secure Julian’s release.

Julian’s life is in the hands of the Australian government. It is not my place to tell this government how to do it, but it must be done.

Julian has to be released.

I place hope in Anthony Albanese’s will to make it happen. I have to. This is the closest we have ever been to securing Julian’s release. I want to encourage and do everything in my power to help that happen.



Julian Assange remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by US President Joe Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist."  Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat



The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.

But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.











The following sites updated:










Posted by at