11 Mar 2024 | News and features, United Kingdom, United States
As Julian Assange awaits the verdict of his final court appeal against his extradition to the USA, where he faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information, those on the outside are determined not to give up the fight to free him.
The Trust Fall: Julian Assange – which will be released at cinemas this Friday – follows the Australian publisher and activist through his lifelong pursuit of truth. The film explores Assange’s life through archive footage and recollections of those who know him, focussing on his work on WikiLeaks and the years he has spent in isolation both in London’s Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh Prison. Director Kym Staton told Index that although his initial mission was to raise awareness of Assange’s plight through the documentary, the reception it has garnered during early screenings has made him optimistic that real weight can be added to the campaign for his freedom.
“We worked really hard to make something that was emotional and powerful and that would help people make sense of [Assange’s] situation. It’s going so well and getting such a great reception, fantastic ratings,” said Staton. “It’s given me a lot of hope that perhaps we can do more than we thought and it might even be a part of this battle to secure Assange’s freedom.”
In the documentary’s most harrowing scene, the infamous Collateral Murder video published by Assange on his WikiLeaks site is played out in full. The footage shows a helicopter attack by the US military in Iraq in 2007, in which 11 civilians, including two Reuters journalists, were shot and killed. Soldiers can be heard laughing in the background of the video as bullets rain down on those on the ground. It’s a difficult watch, but Staton says it was essential for the footage to be included in the documentary in order to drive home Assange’s motivations.
“It’s such a powerful video and there’s nothing else that has ever been seen like it. The impact of that footage is so great it just had to be part of the film,” he said. “To show it to people for the first time on the big screen is such a great opportunity.”
“To witness people’s reaction in cinemas, to look down the aisle and see people crying watching it, it just shows us that it was a good choice,” Staton continued. “I really feel that we can’t achieve change unless people feel something on a hard level. If they don’t feel upset or cry, they may not be compelled to do anything.”
The director also notes that although the Iraq War Logs, of which the Collateral Murder video is part, is the basis of the case against Assange, the US government failed to include this particular video in their indictment, which Staton says is due to it being ”embarrassing” for the state.
The documentary drives home the importance of Assange’s case, which will have huge implications for the future of journalism. One particular concern for Staton is that these charges are being levelled at a journalist for his work in a country purporting to have a free press, which is indicative of the way in which western states tend to fly under the radar when it comes to eroding media freedom due to their reputation for liberal democracy.
“World leaders in the west – in America, Australia, the UK and other countries – they love to give these gallant speeches about free speech and about protecting journalists while on the other hand they’re bringing in all kinds of scary laws,” he said.
“It’s not so much about hate speech, it’s about clamping down on the dissemination of truth.”
The director also said the mere existence of Assange’s case was setting a “shocking and scary” precedent.
“To have an Australian journalist charged under a US law for journalistic work is just a huge injustice, a huge travesty. It’s absolutely obscene,” he said. “If things worsen and he’s put on trial in America and tortured over there, goodness knows what’s in the future for everybody. How are we ever going to have access to truthful information?”
Assange is yet to learn his fate following his appeal, but most routes to freedom have already been exhausted. Because of this, Staton said it was more important than ever to spread awareness about his cause. The director said the film only spent three months in the festival circuit as he wanted to make sure the documentary could be seen by more people as soon as it was ready.
“It just would’ve taken too long and it just wasn’t appropriate when we had a largely crowd-funded documentary to slow down the process to win awards,” he explained.
He is also conscious of the desperation of Assange’s situation on a personal level. During the production stage, Staton read Nils Melzer’s book The Trial of Julian Assange, which included some shocking details that are recreated in the documentary using animation.
“During a prison cell search they discovered [Assange] had hidden a razor blade in his cell so that if he was extradited he could take control of the situation and take his own life. When I read that I was floored. I put the book down and I just sat there,” he said.
Such details humanise the story of Assange, who can often be overlooked due to the wider importance of his case. The documentary shows that not only does this case matter due to the implications it has on the future of media freedom, but that Assange is a real person who has been imprisoned for journalistic work. He deserves to be freed.
The Trust Fall: Julian Assange is released in UK cinemas on 15 March
14 Sep 2023 | News and features, United Kingdom, United States
Julian Assange’s fight against extradition to the USA is entering its final stages. Speaking to Index on Censorship, Assange’s wife Stella says that “this really is the endgame”.
Her concern that time is running out follows the June decision by British High Court judge Jonathan Swift that her husband’s case should not be allowed to go to appeal, a decision she calls extraordinary.
The USA has been seeking to extradite Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to face charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents to international media in 2010 and 2011 about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, detainees in Guantanamo Bay and diplomatic cables. The documents had been sent to him by the US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
The story took a new twist when Assange, an Australian citizen, entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. Ecuador’s then president Rafael Correa granted him asylum. The Swedish cases were eventually dropped. In 2019, Assange was evicted by the Ecuadorian government.
It has since been revealed that Assange was illegally monitored while in the embassy and that senior CIA officials in the Trump administration discussed options to kidnap and even assassinate Assange.
After Assange’s arrest on leaving the embassy, purportedly for breaching his bail conditions, the US government began extradition proceedings.
In January 2021, district judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against his extradition on the grounds that “the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” a decision that the US government appealed. That December 2021, the High Court ruled that Assange could be extradited after US authorities made assurances over how he would be treated in prison. In June 2022, the UK’s then home secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition.
Assange appealed to the High Court but Swift turned down the appeals saying it was “no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made to and rejected by the district judge”.
“Julian has only one option left now which is to ask two Court of Appeal judges to reconsider Swift’s decision,” said Stella Assange. “The good news, if you can call it that, is that this time the decision will not be issued behind closed doors. There will be a public hearing. If the two judges affirm Swift’s position, Julian will not be able to go to the Supreme Court. It will be the end of the road in the UK.”
The date of the public hearing is likely to be announced this week.
With time running out, Assange’s supporters have launched the Day X campaign to encourage supporters to protest at the hearing.
“On Day X, I am asking everyone who can to come to the High Court to support not only Julian but also press freedom and the public’s right to receive truthful information, which are being trampled on,” said Stella Assange.
If he is extradited, Assange faces charges under the Espionage Act, for which there is no public interest defence.
“The outcome is a foregone conclusion, particularly as the US has already argued before the British extradition judge that Julian will not ‘enjoy’ Constitutional protections for free speech under the First Amendment because he is not a US citizen and he was not in the US at the time of the receipt and publication of the information,” said Stella Assange.
Meanwhile, the Australian government is ramping up its efforts to get the US government to drop the extradition request. The current Australian government opposes his imprisonment, often citing the four and a half years he has been imprisoned to date without conviction. This week, it was revealed that 63 members of Australia’s House of Representatives and Senate had called on the US government to drop the extradition request. In a letter of support, the politicians said they were “resolutely of the view that the prosecution and incarceration of the Australian citizen Julian Assange must end”.
“Other Australian lawmakers cite the fact that he is accused of nothing other than acts of press freedom that are being recast as crimes (receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public). They also highlight that the source of said information, Chelsea Manning, is free whereas the publisher, Julian, remains imprisoned. There is a disconnect that sits very badly with the Australian temperament, where fairness matters a great deal,” said Stella Assange.
The US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has made comments on Assange’s case which have led to speculation that there may be scope for a plea deal. If so, this would be announced when the country’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese makes an official visit to the USA in late October. Some are suggesting that the comments may have been made to placate the Australian public, who are strongly supportive of the campaign to drop the extradition request.
“No offer has been made by the United States. Julian has won awards for his extraordinary contribution to journalism so if the United States government considers journalism to be a crime then he is guilty and has many more press and integrity awards to show it,” said Stella Assange.
With the US elections on the horizon, the window of opportunity is closing for Julian Assange and his supporters
“Under Biden, under the guise of continuing an initiated indictment, the administration has reached a new catastrophic low by creating a new normal by failing to undo the political prosecution of the previous administration and keeping a journalist imprisoned for years and years. Julian’s role in exposing corrupt and illegal practices committed by his jailers has lowered the bar for political prosecutions targeting the press the world over. There simply is no moral high ground anymore,” said Stella Assange.
She argues that her husband’s situation is used as justification by authoritarian regimes that imprison journalists.
“It is undeniable that the intrinsics of Julian’s case are so shocking it is something one would expect from the worst dictatorships. A thin patina of ‘process’ cannot obscure the fact that he is facing 175 years for groundbreaking journalism, that the only agencies who will decide on the conditions and degree of isolation that he will be held in if he is sent to a US prison, pre- and post-trial, are the same agencies that were elaborating plans to kill him while he had political asylum at the embassy, that is to say, the CIA,“ she said.
Despite the road rapidly running out, Stella Assange still feels that her husband can avoid extradition. She said:
“The fact that this is a political case gives me hope that individual agency, on the streets, through press freedom groups and those who have the ear and the conscience of those in power, will come together to end this. Julian needs to come home and all that needs to happen is for people to individually and collectively live up to our principles. A society cannot be free, open and democratic without a free press, and press freedom is incompatible with imprisoning Julian Assange.”
16 Jun 2023 | Brazil, News and features, United Kingdom
The temperature is rising, and not just for former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The heat has increased in the UK in more literal ways, leading the National Grid to fire up a coal power plant to create enough energy to power all our air-con units. The irony of this is lost on no-one, particularly environmental campaigners.
No, we haven’t gone off on an environmental tangent. There are plenty of free speech issues stemming from the climate crisis, as we have reported many times in the past. Yesterday morning some of the very people who are protesting dirty energy were dealt another blow. After Home Secretary Suella Braverman gave further clarification that “serious disruption” included slow walking protests that block roads, the amendments to the Public Order Act, which further lowers the “serious disruption” threshold, came into effect. The Home Office said: “While the right to peaceful protest remains a cornerstone of our democracy, causing traffic to halt, delaying people getting to work and distracting the police from fighting crime will not be tolerated.”
Disruptive environmental groups have been targeted in government legislation before (à la the Public Order Bill policy paper’s specific reference to Extinction Rebellion), and this latest example is no different. Braverman said: “The public are sick of Just Stop Oil’s selfish and self-defeating actions, which achieve nothing towards their cause.”
Human rights barrister Adam Wagner, commissioned by Friends of the Earth, gave his legal opinion on the matter, highlighting “serious implications for the right to freedom of speech and protest”. He said there will be a chilling effect on people who want to attend protests, “because people who are deciding whether to organise or attend a protest would not be able to predict with sufficient certainty whether the police are likely to impose conditions”. Human rights group Liberty, meanwhile, is launching a legal action over the legislation, which they describe as being “brought in by the back door”.
Groups like Just Stop Oil do indeed divide opinion. But they cannot be used as an excuse to further erode public assembly and protest rights. Imagine a future controlled by the very worst of governments — now imagine how they could use this law.
Last week also was the anniversary of the deaths of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who were killed while reporting in Brazil’s Javari Valley in the Amazon last year. There were memorials across the world. At an event at Rich Mix in London, people not only remembered their lives, they also shone a light on the threats that Indigenous people continue to face in the Javari Valley, as they stand in defence of the rainforest.
Back in autumn 2021 our special report examined the silencing of the planet’s Indigenous peoples. We reported on how environmental defenders in Ecuador were criminalised, threatened and attacked and Australia’s history of selective listening when it comes to First Nations voices. Indigenous communities are just as at risk now as they were then — and as they have been for centuries.
As the mercury levels keep going up globally and defenders of the planet keep raising their voices, we have not forgotten about the threats they face, and the importance of their voices being heard.
