"Europe, Justice & Press Freedom : The Case of Julian Assange"

"European group “Free Assange Wave” is organizing a rally to demand the immediate release of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange from London’s maximum-security prison, Belmarsh, and that charges against him will be dropped unconditionally.

The rally will take place on April 23rd 2022 in Brussels, Place de La Monnaie from 2 to 6 PM.

Julian Assange has been detained in Belmarsh Prison for almost three years, despite not having been officially convicted and therefore not serving a sentence. Assange’s health is in a critical condition and has been deteriorating ever since he had to take refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy, in London in 2012. As confirmed by U.N. Special Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Melzer, Julian Assange is being psychologically tortured by the U.S., U.K., and Sweden for having published war and other crimes, committed by these countries. This will have to stop.

The rally will be attended by prominent speakers, such as aforementionned UK politician and former head of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, Parliamentary Assembly member of the Council of Europe Ögmundur Jónasson , investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi. Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers Dr Deepa Driver & EU Parliamentarian Stelios Kouloglou. They, and many others, have been vocal throughout the last 8-9 years, in denouncing the chilling effect the indictment and the U.S.’s extradition trial against Julian Assange has had on him, other journalists and on press freedom in Western democratic countries, in general. The program also features performances by Electronic and Electroclash music ensemble; multidisciplinary art collective Chicks on Speed; by David Rovics, a songwriter who sings people’s history to life; and by Jeremiah Day, whose art merges photography, dance and theatrical performance, while drawing attention to political issues. If successful, the unprecedented and aberrant application of the Espionage Act to a publisher would de facto criminalise investigative journalism. The common practices reporters resort to (such as encouraging sources to disclose more information or helping them to hide their identity to avoid retaliation) will be classified as illegal, thus severely limiting the ability of the press to report on governments’ wrongdoings and crimes. Holding governments within democratic societies accountable through publishing truths, however, is the main means by which citizens effectively secure their power. This is nothing less than the true meaning of “democracy”: a political system where power exercised by elected representatives is delegated to them – by, on behalf and in the interest of the people.

Application of the Espionage Act would also set a precedent in normalising requests for extradition by any government in the world (including authoritarian ones), who wish to silence, imprison and torture foreign journalists for publishing truths a government want to be kept hidden. Beside moral disputableness, this would trample upon basic and well established law principles, as well as the judicial reach of a country, non-refoulement and legislation protecting asylees. (It is worth recalling that Assange was given asylum by Ecuador in 2012 and that the procedure by which President Moreno revoked it in 2019 bypassed the Parliament’s ratification, in violation of Ecuador’s own laws and Constitution).

The threat of a dystopian shift, as summarily described above, has caused a surge of outrage among numerous organisations and famous personalities from all around the world. Journalists, whistle-blowers, legal experts, physicians, politicians, intellectuals, artists, activists, and cyber security, human rights and privacy advocates all have spent years protesting the deliberate undermining of a complex system of checks and balances, upon which Western societies are built. Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Slavoj Zižek, Ai Wei Wei, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Mairead Maguire and Alfonso Perez Esquivel, and Agnes Callamard – to name but a few of a multitude of people who have vocally denounced both the proceedings and the implications of the Assange case.

But more than public statements by well-known personalities, the Assange case has triggered the protest of millions of citizens worldwide. This movement has been growing steadily and is gaining momentum, especially in Australia (Assange’s homeland), the US and Europe. The Free Assange Wave rally, which will take place in Brussels, in two months’ time, will certainly be an event European and American leaders will have to reckon with.

In a way, it will be the leaders of these Western democracies who are put on trial on 23 April. Their reaction to this international rally, to our demand for justice for Assange, will reveal to the world whether or not they can still be trusted with the power we have delegated to them to protect free speech, freedom of the press and human rights. Will they, in deed and in word, protect our fundamental democratic institutions against political attacks and corruption, by safeguarding the most sacred duty of a journalist: making information – truth – available to the people these leaders have been appointed to serve? Ultimately, what side of history will our current leaders choose to be on? Because, in the end, we are all Assange."