Free speech and a free press are the bedrock of American democracy.

Over the past year, those liberties have come under threat in ways not seen in generations.

The events of recent weeks — including the arrest of two journalists for covering protests in Minnesota, and the raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter — represent a dangerous escalation.

These are not isolated incidents. They are the latest in a sustained pattern of actions that are systematically undermining press freedom and the public’s right to know.

Such actions are unacceptable and intolerable.

The board of directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) stands unequivocally in defence of a free and independent press — one that can report the facts and hold power to account without intimidation or interference.

For more than 40 years, CPJ has been consistent in its defence of journalists. As a nonpartisan, nonprofit organisation, we stand with journalists whenever they are threatened or placed in peril, anywhere in the world — including in the United States.

We hold all political leaders to the same standard. We will not be silenced by pressure, harassment, or efforts to punish journalists and those who support them.

A free press and the factual information journalists provide are essential to democracy, public safety, and social stability. Without them, the public is at greater risk.

This role is explicitly recognised and protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Journalists have the right to report the news. Efforts to obstruct, punish, or deter them from doing so violate not only their rights, but the rights of all Americans.

CPJ stands with Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, Hannah Natanson, and all journalists targeted for doing their jobs in the United States.

Today we call on leaders across political, civic, and business life—especially those who lead media organisations — to speak out clearly and publicly in defense of press freedom.

Republished from the Committee to Protect Journalists website.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at the arrests of two American journalists for covering a protest at the Cities Church [in the Minnesota Twin City of] St Paul, where a top ICE official serves as pastor.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort from the Twin Cities were released last Friday after initial court hearings.

A federal grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon and Fort for violating two laws, an 1871 law originally designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan and the FACE Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was written to protect abortion clinics.

The indictment names a total of nine people, including the two journalists. US Attorney General Pam Bondi took personal credit for the arrests of Fort and Lemon and two others on Friday, posting on X that the arrests occurred at her direction.

Don Lemon, who was arrested late Thursday night by the FBI in Los Angeles, had been reporting on the church protest in St Paul in January as an independent journalist.

His attorney, Abbe Lowell, described the arrest as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”

On Friday afternoon, Don Lemon vowed to continue reporting after appearing court in Los Angeles.

AMY GOODMAN: Don Lemon attended the Grammys on Sunday night.

Also arrested Friday was Georgia Fort, an independent journalist from the Twin Cities. She posted a video to Facebook just as federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration were about to arrest her and take her to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Minneapolis by that longtime independent journalist Georgia Fort, whose reporting has been recognised with three Midwest Emmys.

‘Journalism Is Not A Crime’                Video: Democracy Now!

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort from the Twin Cities were released last Friday after initial court hearings.

A federal grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon and Fort for violating two laws, an 1871 law originally designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan and the FACE Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was written to protect abortion clinics.

The indictment names a total of nine people, including the two journalists. US Attorney General Pam Bondi took personal credit for the arrests of Fort and Lemon and two others on Friday, posting on X that the arrests occurred at her direction.

Don Lemon, who was arrested late Thursday night by the FBI in Los Angeles, had been reporting on the church protest in St Paul in January as an independent journalist.

His attorney, Abbe Lowell, described the arrest as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”

On Friday afternoon, Don Lemon vowed to continue reporting after appearing court in Los Angeles.

AMY GOODMAN: Don Lemon attended the Grammys on Sunday night.

Also arrested Friday was Georgia Fort, an independent journalist from the Twin Cities. She posted a video to Facebook just as federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration were about to arrest her and take her to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Minneapolis by that longtime independent journalist Georgia Fort, whose reporting has been recognised with three Midwest Emmys.

‘Journalism Is Not A Crime’                Video: Democracy Now!

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Australia’s two federal combating antisemitism bills, the New South Wales laws providing the means to shutdown street protests and move on stationary public assemblies, along with the envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism and the Royal Commission into the same prejudice, have all been set in place following two ISIS-fuelled killers murdering 15 people at Bondi Beach six weeks ago.

While some of these measures were drafted in a hurry immediately post-Bondi in a theatrical attempt to prevent what had already occurred, much of the “combating antisemitism” smorgasbord of laws that serve to clamp down on free speech and the right to political communication in general, appear to have been waiting in the wings for the right political moment to enact.

These dramatic changes that have been foisted upon the country’s public square have been central to a broad campaign that the Zionist lobby has been progressing both locally and throughout the Western world, which is difficult to pin down as most of this advocating takes place behind closed doors, while when featured in the media, these positions are increasingly reflected as the norm.

The Zionist lobby is also known as the Israel lobby. Political Zionism advocates for the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian land, which is today Israel.

A key outcome of the doctrine of Zionism is the displacement and genociding of Palestinians. And it is these truths, and the fact that the Gaza genocide is in progress, that make it necessary to progress the lobby’s agenda right now.

But while the Albanese government is implementing the envoy’s plan and a Royal Commission into antisemitism, which both include a definition of antisemitism that serves to block criticism of Israel at the behest of the lobby, the scope of the federal hate laws further reveal desperate Labor and Liberal parties attempting to shore up power in the face of a drastically shifting political climate.

McCarthyite Zionism
While the Israel lobby has long been understood to have an excessive influence upon the US political establishment, the sway of the Zionist lobby in Australia had not been common knowledge among the broader public until Gaza, as over the past 26 months of the mass slaughter and starvation programme, the lobby’s propaganda machine has been actioned in an attempt to hide this.

As the internet filled with footage of Israeli state actors perpetrating horrific acts in the Gaza Strip in late 2023, the Australian public sphere became a place to attack constituents for speaking out about this worst atrocity since the genociding of Jewish people during the Second World War, and the key way to silence these critics was to charge them with antisemitism — the hate that stoked the Holocaust.

The central target of the local Zionist lobby has been the Palestine solidarity movement, which has been a loud secular voice sprung from a diverse constituency.

Yet, federal and state Labor leaders have been labelling these people, who have been calling for an end to the practice of exterminating humans to obtain land, as outright antisemites and further implied they’re somewhat terroristic.

Assisting in the progression of the Zionist lobby’s hasbara mission, a documentary about rising antisemitism was aired last year, then a series of staged antisemitic crimes swept Sydney streets, rallies against Israel’s barbarity in Gaza have been framed as antisemitic, Jewish voices decrying Israel have been labelled self-hating, while attempts to remove Palestinian voices are underway.

According to US professors Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler, the Israeli state and the Zionist lobby commenced framing criticism of Israel as antisemitic in the late 1960s.

This idea is predicated upon Israel being a Jewish state. It denies the fact that many Jewish people globally don’t adhere to the doctrine of Zionism. And it rests on a flimsy link that only holds because of the force of the lobbyists.

Getting our hasbara on
The Zionist lobby got a foot in the door when PM Anthony Albanase appointed arch-Zionist Jillian Segal to the newly created position of Australian Special Envoy on Antisemitism in July 2024.

This had appeared to be spurred by the moral panic around antisemitism, however it has since come to light that the envoy programme exists across the Western world, with the first US envoy appointed in 2004.

Segal released her Plan to Combat Antisemitism in July 2025. Albanese implemented it straight after Bondi.

At its heart, the plan inserts the IHRA definition of antisemitism that blocks criticism of Israel into every level of Australian government and all its institutions. Further aspects involve the monitoring of tertiary institutions and the media for antisemitism or rather, anti-Israel sentiment.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism comprises of two lines and 11 examples of hatred towards Jewish people, seven of which involve criticising Israel.

The body that produced it has never officially adopted it. However, as one of its drafters has been warning over the past decade, the Zionist lobby has been weaponising the definition to silence anti-Israel criticism globally.

The determination to hold a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is the result of an all-pervasive campaign to see it established post-Bondi massacre, with the suggested reason being to understand how such a terrorist action was able to come to fruition.

Further moral panic
However, the criminal case against one shooter rules this out, so the inquiry will likely serve to stoke further moral panic.

The NSW government commenced seriously stamping out protest in April 2022.

So, the blanket ban on protests, or the public assembly restriction declaration regime rolled out post-Bondi, can be understood as not only placating the Zionist lobby, via the silencing of Palestine solidarity rallies on Gadigal land in the Sydney CBD, but it’s also as a continuation of the closing of the public sphere.

The 50 pages of hate crime laws the Albanese government whipped out of its back pocket last week, appeared so broad that the suggestion is the measures were in the works long before the antisemitic attack in Bondi on 14 December 2025.

ASIO boss Mike Burgess hinted at a need for these last year, so as to stamp out groups, like the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network and Islamic group Hitz ut Tahrir, as they had both been understood to be hovering just beneath the threshold of criminal activity.

So, broad is the reach is the new listing prohibited hate group regime that the major concern right now is that they might be applied to stamp out pro-Palestinian sentiment and protest in the public square to again placate the Zionist lobby.

But further, these laws sitting on the books could likely be used by a future “true blue” führer, so that their opposition can be eradicated on taking office.

The fallacy of necessitated free speech denial
NSW premier Chris Minns’ favoured mantra over the period of the Gaza genocide — or the rise in antisemitism in Australia if one is being “politically correct” — has been along the lines of “the reason NSW does not have free speech protections like they do in the United States, is that this state has a multicultural society and therefore, divergent voices must be tempered”. Yet, this is a lie.

During the 1890s drafting of the Australian Constitution, those involved determined not to enshrine rights in the founding document, as it might result in discriminatory laws already on the books that specifically applied to First Nations people and Chinese people becoming invalid, former High Court Justice Micheal Kirby has noted on occasion.

This was just prior to the 1901 federation of Australia, which was when various pieces of legislation were passed in order to progress the White Australia policy. So, rights were initially denied in this country to maintain a form of white supremacy.

The premier is not only progressing this line when the moral panic around antisemitism is in full flight, but he is also suggesting that the right to free speech should not be protected in NSW, over and over again, after NSW MP Jenny Leong introduced the Human Rights Bill 2025 last October, which seeks to protect free speech, or “freedom of opinion and expression”, among other rights.

The failure to protect free speech in this country was initially about maintaining power when attempting to establish an ethnostate. But the ongoing denial of rights protections since Australia embraced multiculturalism commencing in the 1970s, has really been about politicians maintaining power, and not an attempt to save various ethnic groups living here from annihilating each other.

The idea progressed by Minns is that the broad free speech protections in the United States, which are contained in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, would be a problem in our community because it is multicultural.

However, while the US has traditionally been understood to have been a melting pot of different ethnicities, what is operating as societies in both countries today are based upon multiethnicities, and they’re pretty much the same.

The progression of the “combating antisemitism” laws and policies right now is all about placating the Zionist lobby, while Israel takes as many pounds of flesh as it desires upon occupied Palestinian territory, in order to prevent the ongoing mass civil society outcry over this ethnic cleansing, the mass starvation and mass murder, along with the genocidal tactics that are ongoing in the Gaza Strip.

Yet, the federal listing of prohibited hate group regime also provides the ability to the major parties to criminalise their political opponents as hate groups — think, the Greens — at a point in time when the long-term capture of holding government office by the majors is now under threat.

Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He is the winner of the 2021 NSW Council for Civil Liberties Award For Excellence In Civil Liberties Journalism. Prior to Sydney Criminal Lawyers®, Paul wrote for VICE and was the news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

US President Donald Trump and his team is pursuing a white man’s racist agenda that is corrupt at its core. Trump’s advisor Elon Musk, who often seems to be the actual president, is handing his companies multiple contracts as his team takes over or takes down multiple government departments and agencies.

Trump wants to be the “king” of America and is already floating the idea of a third term, an action that would be an obvious violation of the US Constitution he swore to uphold but is doing his best to violate and destroy.

Every time we hear the Trump team spouting a “return to America’s golden age,” they are talking about 60-80 years ago, when white people ruled and schools, hospitals, restrooms and entire neighborhoods were segregated and African Americans and other minority groups had little opportunity.

Every photo of leaders from that time features large numbers of white American men. Trump’s cabinet, in contrast to recent cabinets of Democratic presidents, is mainly white and male.

This is where the US going. And lest any white women feel they are included in the Trump train, think again. Anything to do with women’s empowerment — including whites — is being scrubbed off the agenda by Trump minions in multiple government departments and agencies.

“Women” along with things like “climate change,” “diversity,” “equality,” “gender equity,” “justice,” etc are being removed from US government websites, policies and grant funding.

The white racist campaign against people of colour has seen iconic Americans removed from government websites. For example, a photo and story about Jackie Robinson, a military veteran, was recently removed from the Defense Department website as part of the Trump team’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Broke whites-only colour barrier
Robinson was not only a military veteran, he was the first African American to break the whites-only colour barrier in Major League Baseball and went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his stellar performance with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

How about the removal of reference to the Army’s 442nd infantry regiment from World War II that is the most decorated unit in US military history? The 442nd was a fighting unit comprised of nearly all second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who more than proved their courage and loyalty to the United States during World War II.

The Defense Department removing references to these iconic Americans is an outrage. But showing the moronic level of the Trump team, they also deleted a photo of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II because the pilot named it after his mother, “Enola Gay.”

Despite the significance of the Enola Gay airplane in American military history, that latter word couldn’t get past the Pentagon’s scrubbing team, who were determined to wash away anything that hinted at, well, anything other than white, heterosexual male. And there is plenty more that was wiped off the history record of the Defense Department.

Meanwhile, Trump, his team and the Republican Party in general while claiming to be focused on eliminating corruption is authorising it on a grand scale.

Elon Musk’s redirection of contracts to Starlink, SpaceX and other companies he owns is one example among many. What is happening in the American government today is like a bank robbery in broad daylight.

The Trump team fired a score of inspectors general — the very officials who actively work to prevent fraud and theft in the US government. They are eliminating or effectively neutering every enforcement agency, from EPA (which ensures clean air and other anti-pollution programmes) and consumer protection to the National Labor Relations Board, where the mega companies like Musk’s, Facebook, Google and others have pending complaints from employees seeking a fair review of their work issues.

Huge cuts to social security
Trump with the aid of the Republican-controlled Congress is going to make huge cuts to Medicaid and Social Security — which will affect Marshallese living in America as much as Americans — all in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans and big corporations.

Then there is Trump’s targeting of judges who rule against his illegal and unconstitutional initiatives — Trump criticism that is parroted by Fox News and other Trump minions, and is leading to things like efforts in the Congress to possibly impeach judges or restrict their legal jurisdiction.

These are all anti-democracy, anti-US constitution actions that are already undermining the rule of law in the US. And we haven’t yet mentioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its sweeping deportations without due process that is having calamitous collateral damage for people swept up in these deportation raids.

ICE is deporting people legally in the US studying at US universities for writing articles or speaking about justice for Palestinians. Whether we like what the writer or speaker says, a fundamental principle of democracy in the US is that freedom of expression is protected by the US constitution under the First Amendment.

That is no longer the case for Trump and his Republican team, which is happily abandoning the rule of law, due process and everything else that makes America what it is.

The irony is that multiple countries, normally American allies, have in recent weeks issued travel advisories to their citizens about traveling to the United States in the present environment where anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t fit into a male or female designation is subject to potential detention and deportation.

The immigration chill from the US will no doubt reduce visitor flow resulting in big losses in revenue, possibly in the billions of dollars, for tourism-related businesses.

Marshallese must pay attention
Marshallese need to pay attention to what’s happening and have valid passports at the ready. Sadly, if Marshallese have any sort of conviction no matter how ancient or minor it is likely they will be targets for deportation.

Further, even the visa-free access privilege for Marshallese and other Micronesians is apparently now under scrutiny by US authorities based on a statement by US Ambassador Laura Stone published recently by the Journal

It is a difficult time being one of the closest allies of the US because the RMI must engage at many levels with a US government that is presently in turmoil.

Giff Johnson is the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and one of the Pacific’s leading journalists and authors. He is the author of several books, including Don’t Ever Whisper, Idyllic No More, and Nuclear Past, Unclear Future. This editorial was first published on 11 April 2025 and is reprinted with permission of the Marshall Islands Journal. marshallislandsjournal.com

Freedom of speech at the Marshall Islands High School

The above is one section of the outer wall at Marshall Islands High School. Surely, if this was a public school in America today, these messages would already have been whitewashed away by the Trump team censors who don’t like any reference to “inclusiveness,” “women,” and especially “gender equality.”

However, these messages painted by MIHS students are very much in keeping with Marshallese society and customary practices of welcoming visitors, inclusiveness and good treatment of women in this matriarchal society.

But don’t let President Trump know Marshallese think like this. — Giff Johnson

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As Julian Assange awaits the final appeal of his looming extradition to the United States while languishing behind bars in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison, leading left luminaries and free press advocates gathered in Washington, DC, on Friday for the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal, where they called on US President Joe Biden to drop all charges against the WikiLeaks publisher.

“From Ankara to Manila to Budapest to right here in the United States, state actors are cracking down on journalists, their sources, and their publishers in a globally coordinated campaign to disrupt the public’s access to information,” co-chair and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman said during her opening remarks at the National Press Club.

“The Belmarsh Tribunal… pursues justice for journalists who are imprisoned or persecuted [and] publishers and whistleblowers who dare to reveal the crimes of our governments,” she said.

“Assange’s case is the first time in history that a publisher has been indicted under the Espionage Act,” Goodman added.

“Recently, it was revealed that the CIA had been spying illegally on Julian, his lawyers, and some members of this very tribunal. The CIA even plotted his assassination at the Ecuadorean Embassy under [former US President Donald] Trump.”

Assange — who suffers from physical and mental health problems, including heart and respiratory issues — could be imprisoned for 175 years if fully convicted of Espionage Act violations.

Among the classified materials published by WikiLeaks — many provided by whistleblower Chelsea Manning — are the infamous “Collateral Murder” video showing a US Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians, the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs, which revealed American and allied war crimes.

Arbitrary detention
According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since he was arrested on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been held under house arrest, confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in Belmarsh Prison, for which the tribunal is named.

Human rights, journalism, peace, and other groups have condemned Assange’s impending extradition and the US government’s targeting of an Australian journalist who exposed American war crimes.

“That the extradition proceedings against Assange are an unexpected legal outcome — is a lie. Based on my experience as Ecuador’s foreign minister…the British government wanted to extradite him all along.” — @GuillaumeLong

Attend the Belmarsh Tribunal. https://t.co/1au3neo8FD pic.twitter.com/hwshaiiQzM

— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) January 19, 2023

In a statement ahead of Friday’s tribunal, co-chair and Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat said:

The First Amendment, freedom of the press, and the life of Julian Assange are at stake. That’s why the Belmarsh Tribunal is landing literally just two blocks away from the White House.

As long as the Biden administration continues to deploy tools like the Espionage Act to imprison those who dare to expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe.

Our tribunal is gathering courageous voices of dissent to demand justice for those crimes and to demand President Biden to drop the charges against Assange immediately.

Belmarsh Tribunal participants include Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, US academic Noam Chomsky, British parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn, former Assange lawyer Renata Ávila, human rights attorney Steven Donziger, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.

The Belmarsh Tribunal hearing in Washington DC on January 20, 2023. Video: Democracy Now!

Assange’s father, John Shipton, and the whistleblower’s wife and lawyer Stella Assange, are also members, as are Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola, Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights, Selay Ghaffar of the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan, investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, and ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

Former U.K. Labour Party leader @jeremycorbyn is in Washington for the Belmarsh Tribunal to advocate for Julian Assange’s freedom as he fights extradition from Britain to the United States.

“We’re standing up for the right to know. We’re standing up for journalism,” Corbyn says. pic.twitter.com/A4v6QbNSN0

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 20, 2023

First Amendment foundation
“One of the foundation stones of our form of government here in the United States . . . is our First Amendment to the Constitution,” Ellsberg — whom the Richard Nixon administration tried to jail for up to 115 years under the Espionage Act, but due to government misconduct was never imprisoned — said in a recorded message played at the tribunal.

“Up until Assange’s indictment, the act had never been used… against a journalist like Assange,” Ellsberg added. “If you’re going to use the act against a journalist in a blatant violation of the First Amendment… the First Amendment is essentially gone.”

Ávila said before Thursday’s event that “the Espionage Act is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the world: an existential threat against international investigative journalism.”

“If applied, it will deprive us of one of our must powerful tools towards de-escalation of conflicts, diplomacy, and peace,” she added.

“The Belmarsh Tribunal convened in Washington to present evidence of this chilling threat, and to unite lawmakers next door to dismantle the legal architecture that undermines the basic right of all peoples to know what their governments do in their name.”

The Belmarsh Tribunal, first convened in London in 2021, is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organised by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the US accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The dilemma facing whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances — the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Article sponsored by NewzEngine.com

This week, on October 27-28, Julian Assange appeared before a United Kingdom court defending himself against an appeal that, if successful, would see him extradited to the United States to face a raft of indictments that ultimately could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.

The US lawyers argued largely that human rights reasons that caused the UK courts to reject extradition to the US could be mitigated. That Julian Assange’s case could be heard in Australia and if found guilty serve out jail time in his home country rather than the US.

Assange’s defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: “In short there is a large and cogent body of extraordinary and unprecedented evidence… that the CIA has declared Mr Assange as a ‘hostile’ ‘enemy’ of the USA, one which poses ‘very real threats to our country’, and seeks to ‘revenge’ him with significant harm.” The lawyers said the United States assurances were “meaningless”.

“It is perfectly reasonable to find it oppressive to extradite a mentally disordered person because his extradition is likely to result in his death.” Fitzgerald QC added that a court must have the power to “protect people from extradition to a foreign state where we have no control over what will be done to them”.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “You’ve given us much to think about and we will take our time to make our decision.”

The judges then reserved their decision. It is expected Assange’s fate will be revealed within weeks.

In this Special Report, we examine why the US wants this man. And we detail the space between whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances: the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to face indictments in the United States? Or should he be set free and offered a safe haven in a country such as Russia or even New Zealand?

It was always going to come down to this: Is Julian Assange captured by the assumptions people have of him, or a blurred line between a public’s right and a state’s wrong.

‘Manhunt Timeline’
The United States effort to capture or kill Assange goes back to 2010. But his inclusion in what’s called the “Manhunt Timeline” soon lost its sting when, under US President Barack Obama, it was believed if charges against Assange were brought before the US courts for his publishing activity, then he would be found not guilty due to the US First Amendment “freedom of the press” constitutional protections.

But everything changed with a new president, and a massive leak to Wikileaks of CIA secret information on 7 March 2017.

That leak of what was called Vault 7 information “detailed hacking tools the US government employs to break into users’ computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.”

CBS News reported at the time: “The documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations safe from prying eyes.” (CBS News)

The Vault 7 leak (and earlier leaks going back to 2010) also revealed information that the US security apparatus argued compromised the safety of its personnel around the world. This aspect is vital to the US Justice Department’s case against Julian Assange.

Among a complex web of indictments and superseding indictments, the US alleges Wikileaks and Assange conspired with whistleblowers (significant among them Chelsea Manning) in what it argues was a conspiracy against the US interest. It also argues that Wikileaks and Julian Assange failed to satisfactorily redact leaked documents before dissemination or publication of the same — including details that put US personnel and agents at risk.

Prominent New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager had knowledge of Wikileaks’ processes, and, going back to 2010, spent time working with Wikileaks on redacting documents.

Hager testified at The Old Bailey in London in September 2020 before a hearing of the Assange case and, according to The Australian, said: “My main memory was people working hour after hour in total silence, very concentrated on their work and I was very impressed with efforts that they were taking (to redact names).” Hager added that he himself had redacted “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names.

On cross examination, The Australian reported: “Hager referred in his testimony to the global impact of the publication of the collateral murder video, which shows civilians being gunned down in Iraq from an Apache helicopter, which led to changes in US military policies. He claimed it had a ‘similar galvanising impact as the video of the death of George Floyd’.” (The Australian)

But it was the Vault 7 leak that triggered the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo to act. After that leak, Pompeo set out to destroy Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange.

Pompeo vs Assange

Mike Pompeo was appointed as CIA director in January 2017. The Vault 7 leak occurred on his watch. It was personal, and in April 2017 he defined Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”.

That definition triggered a shift of approach. The US intelligence apparatus and its Justice Department counterpart then re-asserted that Wikileaks and its publisher and editor-in-chief Julian Assange were enemies of the United States.

Pompeo’s definition paved the way for a more targeted operation against Assange. But, for the time being, the US public modus operandi was to ensure extradition proceedings, through numerous hearings and appeals, were dragged out while stacking an increasing number of complex indictments on the charge-sheet.

The definitions ensured the UK’s corrections system regarded Assange as a high risk and dangerous prisoner hostile to the UK’s special-relationship partner, the USA.

The tactic is well used by governments and states around the world. But in this case it appears beyond cold and calculated. As the US applied a figurative legal-ligature around the neck of Julian Assange it knew his circumstances — that he was imprisoned, isolated, in solitary confinement, on a suicide watch, handled by prison guards under a repetitive high security risk protocol. It knew the psychological impact was compounding, causing legal observers, his lawyers, his supporters — even the judge overseeing the extradition proceedings — to fear that the wall before Assange of ongoing litigation, compounded with the potential for extradition and possible life imprisonment, would overwhelm him.

Let’s detail reality here. In real terms, being on suicide-watch as a high security risk prisoner, meant every time Assange left his cell for any reason (including when meeting his lawyers), on return he would be stripped, cavity searched (which includes being forced to squat while his rectum is digitally searched, and a mouth and throat search).

This was a similar security search protocol that was used against Ahmed Zaoui while he was held at New Zealand’s Paremoremo maximum security prison. At that time Zaoui was regarded as a security risk to New Zealand. He was of course later found to be a man of peace and given his liberty. Sometimes things are not what they initially seem.

In the UK, for Assange the monotonous grind of total solitude and indignity ticked on. In the US in March 2018, Mike Pompeo was set to be promoted. He received the then US President Donald Trump’s nomination to replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State. The US Senate confirmed Pompeo’s nomination and he was sworn in on 26 April 2018.

Pompeo quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted and powerful White House insiders. As Secretary of State, Pompeo toured the globe’s foreign affairs circuit asserting the Trump Administration’s position on governments throughout the world. As such, Pompeo was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men.

Looking back, Pompeo wasn’t the first high ranking US official to regard Assange as an enemy of the state. The Edward Snowden leaks of 2014 revealed that the US government had in 2010 added Assange to its “Manhunting Timeline” — which is an annual list of individuals with a “capture or kill” designation.

This designation came during the early stages of the Obama Administration years. However, US investigations into Wikileaks then suggested Assange had not acted in a way that excluded him from being defined as a journalist and therefore it was likely Assange, if tried under US law, would be provided protections under the First Amendment constitutional clauses.

But when Pompeo advanced toward prominence, Obama was gone. And under Donald Trump, the US appeared to ignore such constitutional rocks in the road. Trump had his own beef with the US Fourth Estate, and the conditions for respecting First Amendment privilege had deteriorated.

Did Trump stop the CIA kidnap or kill plan?

Perhaps we understand the Trump Administration’s mindset more now in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection where supporters of Trump stormed the US House of Representatives seeking to overturn the election result and reinstate Trump as President. Throughout much of that destructive day, Trump reportedly remained at the White House while the mob erected a gallows and sought out Vice-President Mike Pence. The mob’s reason? Because Pence had begun the process of certifying electoral college writs, an essential step toward swearing in as President the newly elected Joe Biden.

It may reasonably be argued that Trump and some members of his Administration displayed a disregard for elements of the US Constitution. But, it must also be said, that Trump had at times displayed an empathy for Julian Assange’s situation.

This week The Hill reported on Trump’s view of Assange through an interview with the former president’s national security advisor, Keith Kellogg (who is also a retired US Army Lieutenant General.

Kellogg told The Hill: “He (Trump) looked at him (Assange) as someone who had been treated unfairly. And he kind of related him to himself … He said there’s an unfairness there and I want to address that.”

Kellogg added that Trump saw similarities between Assange and himself in that Trump would not back down in the face of media attacks: “I think he kind of saw that with Julian in the same way, like ‘ok, this guy’s not backing down’.” (The Hill)

Kellogg’s account seems incongruous to what we now know. On 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

But more on the detail of that below. First, let’s look at a confusing picture of how former President Trump’s words do not meet his Administration’s actions.

We know that “someone” in the Trump Administration put a halt to the CIA’s kill or capture plan. We just do not know whether Trump commanded its cessation, or whether Pompeo or Trump’s attorney-general/s operated outside the former president’s orbit. But we do know the US Justice Department pursued Assange through an intensifying relentless application of indictments of increasing severity and complexity. If it is an MO, then it is reasonable to suggest the legal wall of indictments and the CIA’s plan to kill or capture were potentially one of the same.

Which segues back to the details of the US case against Assange.

The US Justice Department vs Assange
In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that US Whistleblower Chelsea Manning had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the investigation of Julian Assange. The Post correctly suggested that the US Justice Department appeared interested in pursuing Wikileaks before a statute of limitations ran out.

Washington Post reported: “Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the Justice Department likely indicted Assange last year to stay within the 10-year statute of limitations on unlawful possession or publication of national defense information, and is now working to add charges.” (Washington Post)

Then, On April 11 2019, after high-level bilateral meetings between the US and Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Government revoked Assange’s asylum. The UK’s Metropolitan Police were invited into Ecuador’s London embassy and Assange was arrested. 

Once Assange was in custody (pending the outcome of a court ruling of what eventually became a 50 week sentence for breaching bail) the United States made its move. On 11 April 2019 (the same day Ecuador evicted him) US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange referring back to information that Wikileaks had released in stages from 18 February 2010 onwards. (US Justice Department)

This video, known as the collateral murder video, was among the Wikileaks release. The video is of US military personnel killing what they initially thought were Iraqi insurgents. It also displays an apparent indifference by US personnel when, shortly after, it was revealed by ground troops that there were civilians killed, including women and children (and also what were later found to be journalists). The leaked video exposed the United States to potential allegations of war crimes.

The video, and the accompanying dossier of US classified documents, shocked the world and revealed what had been covered up by US secrecy. The information that was leaked by then US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and published by Wikileaks and provided to a select group of the world’s most prominent media, was arguably a tipping point for public sentiment regarding the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was, in the <2010 decade, on a par with revelations of abuses of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.

In a release to the US press, the Justice Department’s office of international affairs stated: “According to court documents unsealed today, the charge relates to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”

It connected to how Wikileaks had acquired documents from US whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The leak contained 750,000 documents defined as “classified, or unclassified but sensitive” military and diplomatic documents. The documents included video. The sum of the leaks detailed what were regarded generally as atrocities committed by American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leaked material was also published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. In May 2010, Manning was identified then charged with espionage and sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison. Later, in January 2017, just three days before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.

On 23 May 2019, the US Justice Department issued a statement confirming Assange had been further charged in an 18-count superseding indictment that alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917. It specifically alleged (among other charges) that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning in late 2009 and that: “… Assange and WikiLeaks actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents. Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US Department of State cables.” (US Justice Department)

The superseding indictment added: “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level.”

It’s also important to note, a superseding indictment, in this context carries heavy weight. It isn’t merely a charge lodged by an investigative wing of government, but issued by a US grand jury.

The May 2019 superseding indictments ignited a stern rebuttal from powerful media institutions.

The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the US request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be “oppressive” given his mental health. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. (Wikipedia.org)

In normal times an assault on the US First Amendment through a clever legal move would destroy a presidency. But these were not normal times.

Ultimately, the powerful US Fourth Estate fraternity failed to ward off the Trump Administration’s men. Trump himself was by this time already hurling attacks on the credibility and purpose of the United States media. And, he tapped in to a constituency that distrusted what it heard from journalists.

Then on 24 June 2020, the US Justice Department delivered more charges against Assange, this time with an additional superseding indictment that included allegations he conspired with “Anonymous” affiliated hackers: “In 2010, Assange gained unauthorised access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.” (US Justice Department)

As the Trump presidency ran out of steam, and arguably created its own attacks on the US national interest, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.

Why Assange was imprisoned in the UK

Julian Assange was tried before the UK courts and convicted for breaching the Bail Act. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. He was expected to have been released after five to six months, but due to the US extradition proceedings and appeal he was held indefinitely.

The initial bail conditions (of which Assange was found to have breached) were set resulting from an alleged sexual violence allegation made in Sweden in 2010. Assange had denied the allegations, and feared the case was designed to relocate him to Sweden and then onto the US via a legal extradition manoeuvre — hence this is why he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange was never actually charged by Swedish authorities nor their UK counterparts, but rather the initial bail breach related to a move to extradite him to Sweden.

Also, as a side-note: in November 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into allegations of sexual violence crime. The BBC reported that Swedish authorities dropped the case as it had: “Weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”

Meanwhile, Assange was imprisoned at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he was incarcerated indefinitely pending the outcome of US extradition proceedings.

There is an irony that in January 2021, the week Assange was denied bail pending the outcome of the US-lodged appeal, back in the US a mob loyal to Trump attempted a coup d’etat against the US constitution.

Out with Trump, in with Biden
On 20 January 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as US President. Around the world a palpable mood of change was anticipated. It’s fair to say those involved or observing the Assange case were hopeful the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency would withdraw the initial charges and superseding indictments.

But, that was not to be.

Then on 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

The investigation’s timeline revealed a plan was developed in 2017 during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA and considered numerous scenarios where Assange could be liquidated while he resided at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The investigation was backed by “more than 30 US official sources”. (Yahoo News)

The media investigation stated: “… the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency’s hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the Vault 7 leak.” 

It added that Pompeo: “was determined to take revenge on Assange after the (Vault 7) leak.”

Apparently, the CIA believed Russian agents were planning to remove Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and “smuggle” him to Russia: “Among the possible scenarios to prevent a getaway were engaging in a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London and ramming the car that Assange would be smuggled in.”

It appears a wise-head in the Trump Administration ordered a halt to the CIA plan due to legal concerns. Officials cited in the investigation suggested there were: “Concerns that a kidnapping would derail US attempts to prosecute Assange.”

It would also be reasonable to suggest that a prosecution would be difficult should Assange be dead.

As the US extradition appeal loomed, Julian Assange’s US-based lawyer Barry Pollack reportedly said: “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information (the CIA plot) and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.”

Assange’s partner Stella Morris, on the eve of the US extradition appeal proceedings also said reports of the CIA’s plan “was a game-changer” in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. (Reuters)

Greg Barnes, special council and Australian human rights lawyer and advocate spoke this week to a New Zealand panel (A4A via the internet): “Now we know that the CIA intended effectively to murder Assange. For an Australian citizen to be put in that position by Australia’s number one ally is intolerable. And I think in the minds of most Australians the view is that the Australian Government ought to intervene in this particular case and ensure the safety of one of its citizens.”

Barnes added that the Assange case is now a human rights case: “I can tell you that the rigours of the Anglo-American prison complex which we have here in Australia and in which Julian is facing at Belmarsh (prison in London) are such that very few people survive that system without having severe mental and physical pain and suffering for the rest of their lives.

“This should not be happening to an Australian citizen, whose only crime, and I put quotes around the word crime, has been to reveal the war crimes of the United States and its allies.” (A4A YouTube)

The respected journalist advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF), this week called for the US case against Assange to be closed and for Assange to be “immediately released”. (Reporters Without Borders)

RSF added: “During the two-day hearing, the US government will argue against the 4 January decision issued by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, ruling against Assange’s extradition to the US on mental health grounds. The US will be permitted to argue on five specific grounds, following the High Court’s decision to widen the scope of the appeal during the 11 August preliminary hearing. An immediate decision is not expected at the conclusion of the 27-28 October hearing, but will likely follow in writing several weeks later.”

RSF concluded: “If Assange is extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in prison on the 18 counts outlined in the superseding indictment… (If convicted) Assange would be the first publisher pursued under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defence.”

RSF recently joined a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organisations in calling again on the US Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange.

Beyond Belmarsh Prison – human rights and asylum options

There remains a logical and considered question as to what will become of Julian Assange should his legal team successfully defend moves of extradition to the United States.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has found relative safety living inside the Russian Federation. But beyond Russia there are few safe-haven options available to Julian Assange.

This week a group called A4A (Aotearoa for Assange) coordinated an online panel of human rights advocates and whistleblowers to consider whether New Zealand should become involved.

It was a serious move. The panel included the United States’ highly respected Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Pentagon Papers, Wikipedia)

Daniel Ellsberg told the panel: “A trial under (the Espionage Act) cannot be a fair trial as there is ‘no appeal to motives, impact or purposes’.”

“A trial under the Espionage Act could not permit that person to tell the jury why they did what they did,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “It is shameful that President Biden has gone in the footsteps of President Trump. It is shameful for President Biden to have continued that appeal.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call the National Defence or National Security…”

It’s a valid point for those that work within the sphere of Fourth Estate public interest journalism. While in New Zealand, there are rudimentary whistleblower protections, they fail to protect or ensure anonymity. For journalists, if a judge orders a journalist to reveal her or his source(s), then the journalist must consider breaching the code of ethics required from the profession, or acting in contempt of court.

In the latter case, a judge can, in New Zealand, order the journalist to be held in custody for contempt, and it should be pointed out there is no time limit of incarceration. Defamation law is equally as draconian. In New Zealand (unlike the United States) a journalist accused of defamation shoulders the burden of proof — to prove a defamation was not committed.

The chill factor (a reference to pressures that cause journalists to abandon deep and meaningful reportage) is real.

Daniel Ellsberg knows what this means. And he fears, that if the US wins its appeal against Assange, it will erode the Fourth Estate from reporting on what goes on behind the scenes with governments: “… there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression… A great deal rides (on this case) on the possibility of freedom.”

His comments connect remarkably with those of former New Zealand prime minister, and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark.

In a previous online discussion, Clark was asked what she thought of Julian Assange’s case. In a considered reply she said: “You do wonder when the hatchet can be buried with Assange, and not buried in his head by the way.

“I do think that information that’s been disclosed by whistleblowers down the ages has been very important in broader publics getting to know what is really going on behind the scenes.

“And, should people pay this kind of price for that? I don’t think so. I felt that Chelsea Manning for example was really unduly repressed.

“The real issue is: the activities they were exposing and not the actions of their exposure,” Helen Clark said.

The US appeals case this week is not litigating the merits of its indictments. But rather it has attempted to mitigate the reasons Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition in January 2021. The US legal team has suggested to the UK court that Assange’s human rights issues could be minimised should he face trial in his native Australia, that if found guilty that he could serve out his sentence there. It gave, however, no assurances that this would occur.

On the eve of the appeal, and appearing before the A4A online panel was Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver.

Dr Driver is an academic with the University of Reading (UK) and a legal observer very familiar with the Assange case. The degree of human rights abuses against Assange disturb her.

Dr Driver detailed what she had observed: “Julian Assange was served the second superseding indictment on the first day of trial. When he took his papers with him, back to the prison, his privileged papers were taken from him. He was handcuffed, cavity searched, stripped naked on a daily basis. [This is] a highly intelligent human being who we already know is on the Autism Spectrum. To be put through the indignities and arbitrariness of the process which is consistently working in a way that doesn’t stand with normal process…

“For somebody who has gone through all of this for a number of years, it has its psychological impact. But it is not just psychological, the physical effects of torture are pretty severe including the internal damage that he has.”

She added: “We expect the high court will recognise the kind of serious gross breaches of Julian’s basic rights and the inability for him to have a fair trial in the UK or in the US and that this case will be dismissed immediately.”

On the merits of whistleblowers, Dr Driver said: “You can see through the Vault 7 leaks how much the state knows about what is going on in your daily lives… As an observer in court I see how he (Julian Assange) is being tortured on a day to day basis. His privileged conversations with his lawyers were spied on.”

Dr Driver said the Swedish allegations were never backed up with charges. In fact the allegations were dropped due to time and insufficient evidence.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concluded after his investigation of the Swedish allegations that Assange was never given the opportunity to put his side of the case.

Dr Driver said: “In any situation where there is violence against women, and I say this as a survivor myself, people are meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And, this new trend which is accusation-equal-to-guilt is a bad trend because it undermines the cause of women, and it prevents women from getting justice — just as it happened in Sweden because indeed nobody will ever know what happened between Julian and those women other than the two parties there.”

A crime left undefended or a case of weaponising violence against women?
Dr Deepa Driver said: “If cases like this are not brought to court, then neither the women nor those accused like Julian get justice. And it is Lisa Longstaff at Women Against Rape who has said time and again, ‘this is the state weaponising women in order to achieve its own ends and hide its own war crimes’. And this is what Britain and America have done in weaponising the case in Sweden, because Sweden was always about extraditing Julian (Assange) to America.”

She suggested Assange’s situation was a human rights case where he was the victim. The view has validity.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur Nils Melzer issued a statement on 5 January 2021 welcoming the UK judge’s ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States (a ruling that this week was under appeal).

Melzer went on: “This ruling confirms my own assessment that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to conditions of detention, which are widely recognised to amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Melzer said the judgement set an “alarming precedent effectively denying investigative journalists the protection of press freedom and paving the way for their prosecution under charges of espionage”.

“I am gravely concerned that the judgement confirms the entire, very dangerous rationale underlying the US indictment, which effectively amounts to criminalizing national security journalism,” Melzer said.

In summary Melzer said: “The judgement fails to recognise that Mr Assange’s deplorable state of health is the direct consequence of a decade of deliberate and systematic violation of his most fundamental human rights by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador.”

He added: “The failure of the judgment to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange, leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide who may be tempted to publish secret evidence for war crimes, corruption and other government misconduct”. (UNCHR)

A call for New Zealand to provide asylum
This week, US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg applauded New Zealand’s independent global identity. And, he called for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to provide an asylum solution should Julian Assange be released.

Dr Ellsberg’s call was supported by Matt Robson, a former cabinet minister in Helen Clark’s Labour-Alliance government and whom currently practices immigration law in Auckland.

Matt Robson said: “We can support this brave publisher and journalist who has committed the same crime, in inverted commas, as Daniel Ellsberg — to tell the truth as a good honest journalist should do. Our letter to our (New Zealand) government is a plea to do the right thing. To say directly on the line that is available, to (US) President Biden, to free Julian Assange.”

Australian-based lawyer Greg Barnes said: “New Zealand plays a prominent and important role in the Asia-Pacific region and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the New Zealand government could offer Julian Assange what Australia appears incapable of doing, and that is safety for himself and his family.”

So why New Zealand?

Daniel Ellsberg said: “There are many countries that would have been supportive of Assange, none of whom wanted to get into trouble with the United States of America. Of all the countries in the world I think you can pick out New Zealand that has dared to do that in the past. I remember the issue over whether they would allow American warships into New Zealand harbours.

“Julian Assange should not be on trial,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “And given he is indicted, he should not be extradited. It is extremely important, especially to journalists.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target, a bull’s eye, on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call national security. It’s to assure every journalist that he or she as well as your sources can be put in prison, kidnapped if necessary to the US.

“That is going to chill (journalists) to a degree that there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression such as we have just seen. The world cannot afford that. A great deal rides on the policy matters on the possibility of freedom,” so said Daniel Ellsberg — the US whistleblower who blew the lid off atrocities that were committed in Vietnam.

Conclusion
Of course there are always complications, such as executive government leaders involving themselves in judicial matters. But sometimes a leader does the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do — as Helen Clark did early on in her prime ministership when she extended an olive branch to people fleeing tyranny onboard a ship called the Tampa, which was under-threat of sinking off the coast of Australia. Helen Clark brought the Tampa refugees home to a new place called Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have been better off as a nation because of it.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Simon Floth in Armidale, NSW

On Monday, September 7, Julian Assange is scheduled to appear in a British court for several weeks of hearings regarding the U.S. attempt to extradite him.

This concerns Wikileaks obtaining and jointly publishing US-classified data with leading outlets in 2010.

Assange remains imprisoned for this, after serving a maximal sentence, ostensibly, for breaching bail in connection with a closed investigation for sexual assault allegations made by Swedish police.

Remand for extradition requires an indictment having been the basis of an arrest. Approval must then come from the Home Office for the Court to process the matter.

But Judge Vanessa Baraitser has scheduled a new arrest of Assange at the first hearing. Her rationale is that she is powerless to reject a superseding indictment – despite its submission a year past the deadline – or to accept it in any way apart from just:

• Presuming future arrest;
• Presuming Home Office approval on the day of the arrest;
• Leaving Assange incarcerated, though the basis for it had been removed when the US decided he would face a different indictment there.

Third indictment files
This third indictment was filed – to the detriment of a year of preparation made by the defence – late last month by US President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.

His administration has often been described by the media as hostile toward it, in multiple contexts, including editorials in prestigious broadsheets opposing extradition of Assange.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits any law that abridges “freedom of speech, or of the press”.

Yet the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act have increasingly been used in contravention of that provision. Assange is accordingly facing 175 years in prison, effectively the term of his natural life, under conditions widely denounced as purposely inhumane.

The United Nations maintains that Britain must free and compensate Assange. So why has it not done that and why hasn’t Australia insisted on it?

The reason is essentially pretence, based on a shared agenda with the US.

Britain does not deny that it is bound to uphold the relevant international laws, because it incorporated them into its domestic law by way of ratification. Nor does it dispute the matter in further detail with the UN. It simply acts as if there is nothing to answer for.

Strictly bound
But unless the UN errs regarding their interpretation or application of these laws, the ratifying country is strictly bound to accord with any given ruling.

It can then be held to account, for instance, by journalists. Their role is to seek comment from that government regarding the UN view of how the law applies, report critically on resulting silence or statements as needed and repeat until the matter is resolved.

Yet the press has never seemed to realise that this is its job. As a consequence, many apparently feel there is nothing binding about international law.

Some even entertain the barbarous notion that without corporeal force to back them up, UN rulings and statements are just incidental fluff.

So when the media and society as a whole are negligent, courts and politicians get away with thumbing their noses at that UN and generally carrying on as if it did not exist.

Likewise for civil servants, as shown by a recent comment from Dennis Richardson, formerly Australia’s Director-General of Security, as well as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Though he nodded to Australian intervention for a journalist in Egypt, that was different in his view, since Assange is in the UK and “last time I looked the UK was a liberal democracy”.

Arbitrary detention
By that line of reasoning, either the UN is mistaken to identify torture and arbitrary detainment in Britain, or there is no actual problem with that being perpetrated on our citizen there.”

In short, nothing calamitous would ever get past the “learned judges” in the UK, as Richardson describes those who preside over Assange’s “fate”.

Yet these judges show contempt for the position of the UN. This is not because they have a better sense of how the law applies in this case or are more impartial. On the contrary, just by virtue of being UK judges, they have a conflict of interest when appraising any ruling applicable to their country.

Nor have they generally been so qualified or familiar with details of the matter as the panel that spent 16 months weighing submissions from all parties. Britain also lost an appeal after having agreed to abide by the decision, which of course, it did not.

But according to Richardson – who effectively spoke for the generally mute leadership of Australia on this matter – so long as the UK is a democracy it should not be accountable to us for its treatment of Assange. If a democracy tortures our citizen, we can live with it.

While some let the matter slide this way, Britain is in violation of legal obligations as determined by the appropriate authority. It is unreasonable to hold that its courts should be left alone to continue in such violation.

The matter should be taken from the courts by the politicians that sent it to them. The prosecutor, judges and politicians should in the meantime be made cognisant of how they need to meet Britain’s obligations under the arrangements it committed to.

Pressured into compliance
Specific details of the case should not be excluded from that education, as the UK needs to be pressured into compliance by all civil means.

Yet the mainstream media has never taken this issue by the horns and is only just coming around from having contributed to the problem. It might have prevented or solved it and could still win the day, contingent on nothing but its own resolve.

Furthermore, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ample power to successfully intervene for Assange and has been advised to that end by prominent legal experts, among others.

Indeed, how could Britain remain defiant if he so much as hints at commenting openly on its failure to comply with medical advice to move Assange to an adequate hospital?

If the press or Morrison are unprepared to act in these ways, it is mainly because of the catch-22 that Britain’s illegal and unconscionable action goes unremarked in public. Such quietude is no less malefic than meek, as it continues to enable outrages by leaving deferential trust in place.

To reiterate, as the authority to rule on such matters, the UN has found that Britain is mistreating a publisher for the US. This is no trifling technicality.

Australia can even sue Britain in its own courts if it fails to provide medical care that Assange has been determined to require. This would evidently leave the UK with no means to continue the pretence of due process.

Britain would simply capitulate
Yet long before it came to that, Britain would simply capitulate with whatever optics are needed to soften the blow to its pride.

The key phrase is “abuse of process” and the pivotal authority is the UN. With any passable media or parliamentary focus on these concepts, even Morrison will be swept along to rescue Assange. He has no means to improve on Richardson’s attempt to wave British abuses out of view, especially since the media began to reveal aspects of the broader injustice.

Some are apparently too proud of lacking sympathy for Assange to abide any defence of him. Nevermind if such defence is derived from politically motivated retribution for publishing authentic documents, found to be in the public interest by major outlets around the globe.

It seems they would sacrifice any point of difference with totalitarian regimes just to be sure that he doesn’t suffer any less than he might.

The Convention Against Torture (CAT) is ratified in the US, UK and Australia. Its second article states that:

‘No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.’

By article 1 of the CAT, every official who acquiesces with torture anywhere contributes to their state’s culpability for it.

The Australian consulate in London has not assisted or rescued Assange from documented torture. If that was part of its job, then the buck stops with Scott Morrison to ensure it does the job.

Likewise, if that was not its job then the buck stops with Scott Morrison to do the job himself or get Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne to do it.

Dr Simon Floth is an Australian analytical philosopher who has lectured in metaphysics and logic at the University of New England. This work is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Wendy Bacon

Journalism is not a crime, which is why we must support Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his battle against extradition to the United States, where he would be tried for offences under the Espionage Act.

On Wednesday last week, it was Assange’s birthday. His last seven birthdays were spent in Ecuador’s London embassy where he had sought refuge to prevent extradition. After UK police violently removed him from the embassy in April, he spent this year’s birthday in Belmarsh high-security prison.

In February, there will be a hearing to decide if Assange will be extradited to the United States. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Assange is literally in mortal danger.

READ MORE: Demasking the torture of Julian Assange

Recently the Professor of International Law at Glasgow University and UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, who visited Assange, found he was showing “symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture …”.

He referred to a “relentless and unrestrained” campaign since Wikileaks started publishing evidence of war crimes and torture in 2010, to criminalise its investigative journalism in violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law.”

Melzer said this campaign includes intimidation, defamation and an “endless stream of humiliating, debasing and threatening statements in the press and on social media, but also by senior political figures, and even by judicial magistrates.”

Support for media freedom – not based on who you like or don’t like
Media freedom is very much in the news. Earlier this month, Australia’s most senior media bosses from the ABC, Newscorp and Nine fronted the National Press Club to argue for media law reforms that would strengthen the capacity of journalists to expose the truth.

This followed Federal Police raids on the ABC and the home of The Australian’s reporter Annika Smethurst.

Reform is badly needed. Giant messages of collective solidarity – Journalism is Not a Crime – were beamed across social media. Those messages of solidarity are not based on our opinion of the individual journalists nor the record of Smethurst’s employer Newcorp, which has bullied its critics and promoted climate denialism.

Those matters are irrelevant to our support when it comes to an issue of the freedom of journalists to publish in the public interest. Let’s remember this when we approach the terrible predicament of Assange.

Assange has been a member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance since 2007. In 2011, Assange won a Walkley Award for his “outstanding contribution”. The Walkley judges said that Wikileaks applied new technology to “penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup”.

One of those many inconvenient truths was the exposure by video of US helicopter attacks in Baghdad that killed 11 civilians including two Reuters journalists. These are the very same acts of journalism that are now the basis of the US Espionage charges.

Much will turn in any US trial on whether First Amendment protection of free speech is offered to Assange as a journalist and publisher. The issue of his relationship to journalism could turn out to be critical.

Let’s consider the significance of his act of publication – an important test of journalism is whether the publication was in the public interest.

Nine years have passed since acts of journalism for which the US government wants to put him on trial. Younger Australians may not remember the massive furore caused by the publication in 2010 of the Collateral Murder videos. Thousands of other documents revealed secret manoeuvres by US, Australian and other politicians, and their mendacious public stances.

The impact of these publications needs to be remembered in the context of revelations that the US justification for the war on Iraq was based on fabricated US intelligence fed to uncritical politicians and journalists, including in Australia. The 2010 leak was a blow to the US security state not because anyone was harmed, but because it threatened public support and compliance for US foreign policy goals.

Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was subsequently imprisoned and tortured for her role in releasing the files. She has currently been reimprisoned and is facing bankruptcy for refusing to testify in Grand Jury proceedings investigating Assange.

Back in 2010, US and Australian leaders threatened Assange with criminal action, the international community of journalists stood in solidarity with him. This is not to say that there were no detractors but to acknowledge an international groundswell of respect and support for Assange.

“It is unacceptable to try to deny people the right to know,” said Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) that covers 600,000 journalists in scores in more than 140 countries. “These revelations may be embarrassing in their detail, but they also expose corruption and double-dealing in public life that’s worthy of public scrutiny.

“It’s untenable to allege, as some people have, that lives are being put at risk here. The only casualty here is the culture of secrecy that has for too long drawn a curtain around the unsavoury side of public life.”

In accepting a Walkley Award, leading journalist Laurie Oakes said he was ashamed of the Australian government’s hostile response and called on journalists to reject then PM Julia Gillard’s view that the Wikileaks publication was illegal. This was greeted with applause.

In 2012, the UK National Union of Journalists also acknowledged the “important contribution made by Julian Assange himself” and stated that “the type of journalism to which Wikileaks has made a significant contribution represents a real challenge to those governments, wherever they are, which rely on propaganda, torture, warfare and subversion to accomplish their political and economic aims.”.

In 2011, Assange was also awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for brave reporting. This award is given for reporting that “a human story that penetrates the established version of events and illuminates an urgent issue buried by prevailing fashions of what makes news.”

The winner must tell an ” unpalatable truth, validated by powerful facts, that exposes establishment conduct and its propaganda …”.

Seven years on, we live in more conservative times. There is no denying that support from journalists this year has been muted, but it is worth noting that there are many journalists, filmmakers and other media workers among 200 people who wrote recently to Assange’s union – the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) – calling on it to build its campaign in support of Assange.

The MEAA has written two strong letters seeking to meet with the government and opposing extradition. The union wrote, “the extradition of Assange and prosecution by the United States for what are widely considered to be acts of journalism would set a disturbing global precedent for the suppression of press freedom”.

A petition opposing extradition now has more than 160,000 signatures.

US indictment criminalises journalistic inquiry
The International Federation of Journalists, representing more than 600,000 media professionals in more than 140 countries, recently passed an urgent motion at the request of the MEAA. It wrote in a statement, “… this indictment would criminalise journalistic inquiry by setting a dangerous precedent that can be abused to prosecute journalists for their role in revealing information in the public interest. By following this logic, anyone who publishes information that the US government deems to be classified could be prosecuted for espionage.”

The range of those supporting Assange is impressive. But there are also a few dissenting voices including Peter Greste, himself imprisoned in Egypt on journalistic freedom issues.

Shortly after Assange’s arrest, Greste published a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, arguing that Wikileaks was not a news organisation. He argued that Assange simply “dumped” hundreds of thousands of documents onto his website, free for anybody to go through, regardless of their contents or the impact they might have had.”

Contacted by the author, Greste who is now a spokesperson for the newly formed Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom said that his board was “constantly reviewing the case, at this stage the AJF has not changed its position. We appreciate Julian’s awards and his membership of the MEAA, but for the time being, the AJF is standing by its current thinking.”

Experienced investigative journalist Andrew Fowler, who previously worked at Four Corners and has closely studied Wikileaks, strongly rejected Greste’s views. Respected retired SBS broadcaster Mary Kostakidos is also a strong supporter of Assange.

It is not correct to say that Wikileaks just dumped documents. Here, for example, is the introduction providing context for the publication of the Collateral Murder videos. (As far as I am aware the material providing at wikileaks.org is the same material as was there in 2011.)

Back in 2011, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) published a piece I wrote for World Press Freedom day on its website. It was also published by the Pacific Media Centre and on this blog. After pointing out that Wikileaks described itself as a media organisation, I wrote: “According to its website, the criteria WikiLeaks applies in deciding whether to publish leaks are these: that the information has not previously been revealed; that it was previously restricted, censored or otherwise withheld from the public; and the information is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance.

“WikiLeaks also has a practice of querying issues about the veracity of information …The real issue is the openness of governments and whether they are actively misleading the citizens of their own and other countries. What is at stake are the boundaries of secrecy and whether citizens have a right to know what governments and large corporations are doing.”

Journalists will disagree about where those boundaries. There will be differences between journalists about how far deletions of names in leaked documents should go and whether documents on which stories rely should be published in full. Wikileaks’ focus on publishing documents to enable transparency influenced other news organisation. What is routine today was still unusual in 2010.

It has been acknowledged by the US State Department that no sources were found to have been harmed by the 2010 document publications. In any case, the 2010 documents had already been seen by hundreds of thousands of people. What we can say is that Wikileaks has a very strong record in publishing genuine documents and protecting hits own sources. That is the job of a journalist.

There is no space here to review all the accusations against Wikileaks. The opponents who constantly trivialised the threat from a US grand jury were wrong.

Given the campaign to denigrate his character, the least we can say is that personal allegations against him need to be validated by evidence, and there is much debate about their veracity.

Accusations of sexual misconduct
I will just say this on the matter of sexual assault allegations against Assange. As a feminist, I absolutely support the right of all women to make complaints and not to be abused or denigrated for doing so. There is now only one woman whose matter is an ongoing issue. There is no doubt that her statement raises suspicion that Assange had unprotected sex with her without consent.

But it equally true that Assange has provided evidence in the form of a statement that provides a different account consistent with his innocence. He waited years before being given the opportunity to do that. He has not been charged and deserves to be afforded natural justice – certainly, his guilt should not be asserted. It is no criticism of the woman to argue that the Swedish prosecutors have behaved inconsistently.

There is evidence that they have been pushed by UK authorities. (For those who want to read more about this topic, Professor Melzer published this considered response to some critics of his statements two days ago. He has found that in the Swedish case, “the responsible authorities have deliberately abused Swedish law, procedures and institutions for the purposes of persecuting Assange…”.)

This case cannot currently be resolved.

My support for Assange is not based on an issue of whether he is a good person or whether everything he has ever published was based on sound decision-making. I do not know him. This is about whether journalists who publish information in the public interest are criminals.

It is time to focus on the substance of the US Espionage charges. which place him in grave danger. We must hope that Assange does not spend his next birthday in a US prison. If we fail, other journalists who are not compliant with the goals of governments will be exposed to ever increasing risks.

Here is a link to a video of a speech I gave at a NSW Greens forum on Wikileaks in 2010.

• Wendy Bacon is a Sydney investigative journalist and retired journalism professor. She is on the advisory board of the Pacific Media Centre and Frontline editor of Pacific Journalism Review. This is an edited version of an article by her published by Altmedia last week. It was also the basis for a speech I gave at a vigil in support of Julian Assange.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz