London – Then UK gives green light to extradition of Julian AssangeAustralian citizen, activists, press freedom organizations and Wikileaks founder Stella’s wife intensified the pressure on Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to intervene to block a transfer to the United States.
On Tuesday, 21st, Karen Percy, Federal Head of the Media Division of the Alliance for Media, Entertainment and the Arts (MEAA), sent a letter to Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Penny Wong formalizing the request. direct action of the government.
Meanwhile, Stella Assange, in interviews and shows on social networks, emphasized the support of Australian parliamentarians and celebrities, which could be the only way out for the founder of WikiLeaks after the defeat in all British judicial cases.
Organizations demand Australia enter Assange case to avoid extradition
If WikiLeaks founder Joe Biden is prosecuted by his government, he could face 175 years in prison for publishing classified documents on the WikiLeaks website about the US government’s actions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The idea of taking Assange to Australia is not new. His father has long been running a local campaign to mobilize the community and politicians. But over the past week, the tone has risen.
One option for Assange would be to serve his sentence in Australia rather than to the United States, as the US government offered in its guarantees of the journalist’s extradition to the UK. Or let the charges against him be dropped and he go back to his hometown.
But without the intervention of the Australian government, activists do not believe this will happen.
hour At a press conference in London shortly after it was announced that the British government had approved the extradition, Assange’s wife expressed her expectations that the newly elected Australian prime minister from the Labor Party would take a different stance from her predecessor in the case, and reminded that she signaled this during the campaign.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, urged the Australian government to take swift action to drop all charges against Assange.
MEAA, to which the journalist has been a member since 2007, stressed in a note that there is currently “only a small chance to appeal the extradition”. The organization therefore believes that the country’s participation is important.
In the letter sent to the government, the organization recalled that Assange was charged with “disclosure of US government records revealing that the US military committed war crimes against civilians, including the killing of two Reuters journalists in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
The IFJ said last week’s UK decision was a “significant blow to media freedom and a major threat to journalists, whistleblowers and media workers around the world”.
“We urge the Australian Government to act quickly to intervene and pressure the US and UK governments to dismiss all charges against Assange. Journalism is not a crime.”
Karen Percy, Head of MEAA’s Media Division, said in a letter sent this Tuesday (21):
“The decision to pursue extradition to the United States jeopardizes journalism everywhere.
We urge the Australian government to appeal to our nation’s traditionally close relationship with the United States to advocate for Assange’s release from prison and the dropping of charges leading to his return to his family.”
Elsewhere in the document, Percy points out that media outlets around the world are working with WikiLeaks to publish the same material for which Assange was penalized, including Australian organizations such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“None or their editors are persecuted by the US government; only Assange is being followed.”
The MEAA representative reiterates that Assange’s extradition to the US is a “dangerous step” against the world press:
“This means that any journalist anywhere in the world can be charged and extradited for disclosing any information that the US government has classified as ‘confidential’.”
“The Prime Minister, Australia must intervene to prevent an Australian citizen from dying in a US prison for disclosing information in the public interest.
We ask you to take the case with President Biden to end this persecution of Julian Assange and allow his release to join his wife and children.”
MEAA wrote a letter to the Prime Minister @AlboMP and Foreign Minister @SenatorWong They urged the United States to drop the spying charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian. #Assange. #MEAAmedia #Freedom of the press #FreeAssangeNOW https://t.co/5girBmLw2g pic.twitter.com/1PfzTMa0dz
— MEAA (@ileMEAA) 21 June 2022
The now hesitant Australian Prime Minister has already taken a stand against Assange’s extradition
But on Monday (20), the Prime Minister said in an interview with reporters that he would not accept pressure to intervene publicly in favor of WikiLeaks’ founder.
But in December, while still leading the opposition, he said he “didn’t see the meaning” of the “continuing persecution” of Assange by US officials.
“He’s also an Australian citizen. And with that comes the obligation to ensure he gets adequate support from the Australian government.”
Albanese told reporters in Melbourne that he has not changed his stance and will not accept pressure from social media users:
“There are some people who think that if you capitalize something on Twitter and put an exclamation point in it, it somehow makes it more important – no.”
According to Australian broadcaster ABC News, the federal government has voiced behind-the-scenes allies on the plight of the Australian citizen who has been imprisoned for three years in the UK.
In an interview with Australia’s Sky News, Labor Minister Tony Burke said yesterday that talks will continue but will not do what he calls “diplomacy via megaphone”.
Assange’s wife presses against extradition to Australia
Stella Assange, who married the journalist in March in prison where she has been detained for three years, is one of the biggest activists for Julian’s release.
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She is an active voice on social networks and in the press, intensifying the support she receives from personalities and politicians for her husband.
In a recent post, she shared the testimony of Australian professor Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was imprisoned for more than 800 days in Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while trying to return to her country after a conference in 2018.
“Australian government, now it’s your turn. The Prime Minister and Secretary of State called Washington to put an end to Assange’s more than ten-year ordeal. “You may not like him, but it’s time to stand up for our fellow citizens.”
“The people of Australia, David Hicks of Guantanamo, cannot accept that you are willing for me to deal with the mullahs in Iran and the El-Sisi regime in Egypt, dear, but you cannot persuade our close allies to end Assange’s policy of persecution. ” added the teacher.
The Australian people cannot accept for me that you are ready to come to terms with the mullahs in Iran and the El-Sisi regime in Egypt. @PeterGrest You can get David Hicks out of Guantanamo, but you cannot persuade our close allies to end their political prosecution of Assange.
– Kylie Moore-Gilbert (@KMooreGilbert) 18 June 2022
Remember Julian Assange’s Extradition Case
Julian Assange was arrested in London in 2019 after spending more than six years in the Ecuadorian embassy as a way to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces a sexual assault case, and then to the United States for crimes against national security.
The WikiLeaks founder is responding to 18 lawsuits filed by the US government alleging a conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information after hundreds of thousands of leaked documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were posted on the site.
In January 2021, British District Judge Vanessa Baraister accepted Assange’s defense thesis and blocked his extradition on the grounds that he was at risk of committing suicide if he went to a maximum security prison in the United States.
In February, a British court granted the country only three procedural appeals that did not include a medical report indicating a suicide risk, and they had little chance of changing the verdict, analysts said.
Attorneys from the US State Department presented the court with a series of guarantees aimed at reducing the risk of alleged suicide; this includes not being subject to a special segregation regime in a maximum security prison.
Assange’s defense sought to convince the Supreme Court that he could not be extradited to a country that tried to kill him. US plans to kidnap and kill Wikileaks founder in 2007.
But it was not successful. The US State Department managed to overturn the decision in December 2021 and paved the way for extradition.
Last week, the National Home Office announced that it had been authorized for extradition. The defense can still appeal, but the chances of success are slim.
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source: Noticias
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