The Planet needs and wants Julian Assange free
Autumn 2006.
The courageous adventure of Wikileaks begins, an international organization with no official headquarters and a non-profit, founded, together with other activists from the world of investigative journalism, by Julian Assange.
Thirty-five-year-old Julian, a brilliant computer scientist who over the years has developed a strong allergy to power, born in Australia from a couple of theatre actors who met at a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, as editor-in-chief helps Wikileaks to become a reference for the publication of documents from anonymous source and secret information.
Leaks (leaks of news) hosted by the IT platform to be made known to the general public are beginning to arrive from every corner of the planet, such as the one that in 2008 brought to light the violent repression of the Tibetan revolt by the Chinese government.
Wikileaks becomes a source itself for all the major international news organizations and Julian began to become a reference for freedom of information all over the world. But April 2010 marks the beginning of the war on Assange by the governments of the Global North.
In fact, Julian publishes the revelations coming from Chelsea Manning, a former US soldier who delivers thousands of confidential documents collected while carrying out their role as an intelligence analyst: all evidence of war crimes committed by the United States of America in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The so-called Cablegate is also released online: a huge review of confidential documents on the dark work of the US government throughout the world. From that moment the persecution for Julian began, so intense that Prof. Nils Melzer, former special rapporteur of the United Nations on torture, a few years later would declare: "In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic states deliberately isolating, demonizing and abusing a single individual for so long with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law…”.
The crossfire of "democracies" reaches levels never seen before against the world of information: Australia threatens Assange to withdraw his passport and to launch an investigation against him, the United States begins to prepare the accusations, based on the illegal disclosure of classified content in the interest of national security, and Sweden issues an arrest warrant against him on charges of raping two women.
The allegations from Sweden, as well as the related investigations, would definitively lapse in 2019, but in the meantime, Julian is in Great Britain at the end of 2010 and voluntarily gives himself up to the officers of Scotland Yard. After two weeks in prison, he is released on bail. In the meantime Sweden has launched an extradition request and they hand him over to the USA and Assange then has to face a legal battle together with the lawyers who are close to him.
Among them is the South African lawyer Stella Moris.
Stella and Julian became secret lovers for a long time, and from their relationship, Gabriel and Max would be born; two young boys who have never seen their dad as a free man. Stella and Julian later married in Belmarsh prison on 23 March 2022.
Bronze sculpture Anything To Say? by Italian Davide Dormino placed in Berlin's Alexanderplatz on May Day 2015. Photo by Davide Dormino released under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license.
Summer 2012.
The British Supreme Court rejected the appeal presented by Assange's legal team against the green light for extradition to Sweden. Julian thus chooses to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London to declare himself a political refugee.
While enjoying the precious help of the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, Julian is forced to stay in that small apartment for almost 7 years, during which time Wikileaks activities do not stop: in 2016 it was revealed to the world how, in the primaries for the US presidency, the leaders of the Democratic Party had plotted against Bernie Sanders to favor Hillary Clinton, who in 2010, as Secretary of State, suggested to Obama to kill Assange with a drone.
In 2017, however, Vault 7 was published, the largest ever leak of information concerning the CIA, which revealed how US intelligence developed software and hardware for espionage operations carried out through technologies capable of controlling computers, smartphones and smart TVs; a revelation that will cause Trump and Pompeo to devise a plan to kidnap and kill Assange.
In April 2019, the new president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, revoked Assange's Ecuadorian citizenship and withdrew the granting of political asylum resulting in the British police entering the embassy and forcibly dragging him away on the morning of 11 April. Julian is taken to the maximum security prison of Belmarsh: his health conditions are poor due to the lack of sun and medical care during the years of isolation in the embassy.
At the end of 2019, Sweden's accusation fell due to lack of evidence, but the British justice system, has in the meantime, examined the extradition request of the United States who want Assange in order to try him for a total of eighteen charges, with a penalty amounting to 175 years in prison.
The legal battle to avoid extradition and for his release from prison becomes increasingly complicated: the release on parole for having served half the sentence is denied due to the danger of him fleeing.
In the various hearings, held in structures dedicated to terrorist crimes instead of in the usual courtrooms, Julian appears increasingly exhausted.
In January 2021 London denies extradition due to the risk of suicide to which Assange would be exposed if he were locked up in an oppressive US prison.
On 17 June 2022, the British Secretary of State Priti Patel signs the extradition order to the USA.
Julian's lawyers have appealed the omissions in the original trial and it is now up to the High Court to decide whether or not to reopen the case; a decision that can arrive at any moment, presumably by the end of the year.
Opposed by governments and ignored by the mass media, we know Julian's courageous story only thanks to the work of some stubborn journalists, including Stefania Maurizi, who knows Julian and Wikileaks well, and has conducted an accurate journalistic investigation reported in her book 'Secret Power: Wikileaks and its enemies'.
Autumn 2022.
Twelve years after the beginning of his persecution, Julian has not suffered any criminal conviction and has been living in prison for 10 years simply as a precautionary measure.
Julian's fault is that he dared to show the lies that protect many of the world's governments; lies intertwined with the financial interests of large corporations, lies that suffocate the populations of the planet, their lands, their waters, and all forms of life. And in fact, there are many crimes of a social and environmental nature that Julian, with his passionate activism, has allowed the world to know.
In 2008 a serious incident occurred and was kept hidden. On a British Petroleum extraction platform in Azerbaijan there was a serious gas leaks, and a year and a half later another disaster with a similar cause by BP resulted in the death of 11 workers and the spilling of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
In 2009 another dossier revealed how Shell had benefited from US intelligence work and had managed to place trusted men in the Nigerian government and oppose local movements that claimed oil revenues.
In 2010 Wikileaks exposed how the USA had put international pressure on other countries, during the COP15, so that the Copenhagen Climate Agreement, drawn up behind closed doors, did not contain binding commitments.
In 2011 the collusion between the Bayer company and the US Environmental Protection Agency was revealed, which released the authorization for the use of clothianidin, an insecticide that causes serious toxic effects on insects and in particular on bees, resulting in disastrous consequences on the ecosystem.
In 2012, with the leak called The Global Intelligence Files, evidence was disseminated how multinationals, frightened by organizations and movements for the environment and human rights, have equipped themselves with a counterespionage system. Those secretly spying on activists and NGOs included Coca-Cola, the world's largest plastic producer, and Lockheed Martin, which is the world's largest arms seller.
All these revelations have massively helped the resistance of those who are committed every day to defending the rights of humans, animals and the environment. All this information has helped public opinion and the media themselves to be aware of the crimes perpetrated against us by corrupt governments and financial corporations.
At present, there is worldwide discussion about Environmental Justice and Social Justice, and many organisations act in their name, to achieve them, to defend them; well, Julian Assange reminds us that “one of the best ways to get Justice is to show injustice”.
In 2015, for example, Wikileaks released the secret texts of TiSA, the largest trade treaty in history aimed at liberalizing essential services, reducing public control over energy sources, eliminating environmental safety standards and allowing private companies to avoid national laws. This revelation from Wikileaks took place around the time of COP21, that of the famous Paris Agreement, precisely to support, with evidence, the requests from environmental movements and humanitarian organizations to reduce emissions.
The result? The revelations of the platform created by Assange resulted in an end to that environmentally and socially cruel treaty.
The reality is, in front of the truth, people rise up and conspiracies fall.
According to Julian's words "we must begin with the Truth."
And one of these truths is that we need Julian.
We need Julian Free.
This Planet needs Julian Assange Free.
The author of the cover image is Martha Stephens, cofounder and editor of the nonprofit media activism platform The Human Exploring Society.
The artwork is released under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license.
Feel free to share it under the same rules.
The author of this article is Manlio Pertout, cofounder and editor of the nonprofit media activism platform The Human Exploring Society.
The article is released under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license.
Feel free to share it under the same rules.