versione in ITALIANO

PHOTO: Delivering the letter to the EU in Rome, 2021/09/28

Letter and petition by:
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome, Italiani per Assange, DiEM25 in Italy, Rete NoWar - Roma, Peacelink

For over ten years, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have constantly violated the human rights of the Australian journalist Julian Assange.

These two countries have, in fact, worked together to arbitrarily detain Assange, torture him psychologically, and infringe on his Freedom of Expression as exercised through his web site Wikileaks. These are the self-same abuses that the European Union has judged worthy of sanctions in the past, when they have been perpetrated by authoritarian regimes.

On September 28th, 2021, the UNESCO-designated day of Universal Access to Information and for the Right to Know, we wrote to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, reminding her that the values that the U.N. honors are those that Julian Assange has constantly fought for. Yet for having put those values into practice, he has been imprisoned in the United Kingdom and risks being imprisoned perpetually in the United States, if extradition is granted this October 27th.

We urged President von der Leyen to dissuade the U.K. and the U.S. from continuing to persecute Assange and to enjoin them to free him immediately, by raising the prospect, in case of non compliance, of precisely those sanctions which European Union regulations provide for, in cases like this.

You can find our letter here: http://peaceandjustice.it/assange/28-9/letter_ec.pdf

We are asking you to co-sign it, by adding your signature to this petition.

This letter was signed initially by the five Italian associations promoting it as well as: Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Deepa Govindarajan Driver, Paul Jay (theanalysis.news), Michael Albert (Znet), Dr Derek Summerfield (former chief psychiatrist at Freedom from Torture), Andrew Feinstein (ANC MP in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet), Margaret Kunstler (New York civil rights attorney), David McBride (ADF whistleblower), Peter Cronau (journalist, ABC Australia) and a long list of Italian signatories -- associations and individuals -- appearing separately below.