Our next rally for Julian Assange will be Monday, June 12, at 11am at the Boston Globe, One Exchange Place, Boston (State subway stop.) We are calling them out for their lack of coverage of this, the most important press freedom case of our time. At noon, we will break and write letters together at Falafel Place at 260 Washington St. (https://falafelkingboston.com/). For those of you who would like to help but can’t come, I’m attaching our Media Contacts list and there are key contacts in the graphic above. Let’s concentrate on the Globe, but, of course, you can write to whoever you’re inspired to write to.
Please spread the word about this rally. Here’s the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/803472618147275
Two lawyers on our national steering committee, Margaret Kuntsler and Deborah Hrbek, went to London and saw Julian Assange yesterday, June 1. They are involved in the case being brought against the CIA, Mike Pompeo, the security company at the Ecuadorian Embassy UC Global et al about how Assange’s visitors’ devices were searched and copied. The deadline for their filing of the response to the request to dismiss the suit is June 7 and they were conferring about that. They reported that Julian was engaged in the discussions for hours and brilliant, as usual, though he is not robust, as far as his physical health.
We had a good rally on Monday, May 22 and went to the Black Seed afterwards and wrote letters. We’ll try this plan a second time and then evaluate whether people like it and it seems worthwhile, as opposed to doing rallies of an hour and a half.
There is continuing to be encouraging news on the Assange case.
We continue to see more leaders stepping forward, calling for Julian Assange’s freedom.
May 30, President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, praised Julian Assange, calling him “fighter for human rights and freedoms and Sakharov prize laureate” and calls for the “universality of human rights protection” in his case.
https://twitter.com/ludskeprava/status/1663483604993802241?s=20
May 24, Sydney Free Assange Rally, Stella Assange spoke at Sydney rally: “It’s not just Julian who has lost his freedom, but all of us”’ https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/25/rgzp-m25.html
Footage: https://twitter.com/theprojecttv/status/1661299568301023232?s=20)
Last week in Australia, the violations of Julian Assange’s Human Rights were documented by his wife Stella Assange, and his UK attorney Jen Robinson at the NPC and subsequent press interviews:
May 22, Australia National Press Club, Stella Assange speech, excerpt:
“A 175-year sentence is a living death sentence. A Prospect so desperate that the English court found that it would drive him to take his own life, rather than live forever in hell.
We must do everything we can to ensure that Julian never, ever, sets foot in a US prison. Extradition in this case is a matter of life and death.”
Full speech: https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/22/stella-assange-in-australia-bring-julian-assange-home/
Full NPC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrsQxRtSBU0&ab_channel=ABCNews%28Australia%29
May 22, Canberra’s National Press Club with Stella Assange and Jen Robinson + days of press coverage!
ABC Australia and Sky news wrote several factual articles and conducted sympathetic interviews.
Stella Assange on her husband’s 4-year incarceration in virtual solitary confinement, excerpt:
“He reads to keep his mind busy, to fight the crushing sense of isolation and of time wasting away.
“He has spent 1502 days in a prison cell, with no end in sight, and no way of knowing how many days to count down to a release.”
[son] Six-year-old Gabriel has regular nightmares of prisons after standing in endless queues and having his hair, mouth and ears inspected before entering to see him.
Ms Assange warned that extradition to the US would put her husband in “the deepest, darkest hole of the US prison system, isolated forever”, labelling it a “living death sentence”.
May 29, Australia ABC’s Q&A program with Julian Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson says that the US is “prosecuting journalism” in its bid to extradite the jailed Wikileaks founder and that it “diminishes our ability to raise free speech concerns internationally”.
https://twitter.com/QandA/status/1663389459893846016?s=20
May 28, ABC Australia Q&A poll: “Should the Australian government make a deal with the US to bring Julian Assange home?” 89% voted “YES”.
https://twitter.com/QandA/status/1663020574367703040?s=20
But there is also serious cause for concern.
Since the prosecution of Assange, we’ve seen more authoritarian legislation from Western governments, i.e., passing anti-protest laws: ‘South Australia passes laws to crack down on protest after disruption of an oil and gas conference’:
https://twitter.com/thejuicemedia/status/1663733727535726592?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKGBcZ1pdYY&t=4s&ab_channel=thejuicemedia
The classified documents Assange published, and was indicted for, show evidence of war crimes. Classifying war crimes violates Obama era Executive Order #13526.
“…the Obama administration attempted to follow through on pledges of transparency – assessed that as much as 90 percent of classified information did not need to be so at that time, or ever. The proliferation of digitally produced classified information in the time since leads experts to believe that number now could be in excess of 95 or even 99 percent.”
95-99 percent of classified information warrants no classification!! It’s no wonder that Daniel Ellsberg, with only a few months to live, implores journalists to investigate the classification system:
May 24, Trevor Timm Exec Director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, ‘In honor of a whistleblowing legend: Announcing the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy’:
“In a passionate speech, Ellsberg implored the crowd, and the press in general, to investigate the U.S. government’s classification system.”
June 1, ‘FBI restarts Julian Assange probe despite hopes of release’:
“United States law enforcement authorities are seeking to gather new evidence about Julian Assange in an apparent effort to bolster their case against the WikiLeaks founder, even as hopes rise among his supporters that a diplomatic breakthrough could soon see him released from prison”
More encouraging items:
June 1, Stella Assange tweets: “BREAKING: UK judge orders @CPSUK to come clean about its destruction of key Assange documents by June 23 or risk contempt proceedings. This is a MAJOR breakthrough in Stefania Maurizi’s FOI case against UK prosecution authorities concerning Assange.”
https://twitter.com/Stella_Assange/status/1664230993199259648?s=20
Satirist/Podcaster, Randy Credico’s Free Assange billboard truck is back on the streets of Washington DC! Stops at EDVA Federal Courthouse, K Street, Capitol Hill, passing out literature, talking to passers-by about the Assange case. Once individuals learn the facts on the Assange case, they ‘inherit’ the injustice being inflicted on Assange – they understand that this injustice is being inflicted on all of us. #WeAreAllAssange
https://twitter.com/CredicoRandy/status/1663919640303525890?s=20
Daniel Ellsberg, in one of his last public talks, told a room full of journalists, “overclassification is a fundamental problem for our democratic society. When so much information is classified, it becomes impossible for citizens, journalists, and oversight bodies to access vital facts about government activities. This lack of transparency undermines public trust in government institutions and hinders the ability of the public to hold officials accountable for their actions.”
May 31, journalist Caitlin Johnstone wrote: “If western governments need to keep ramping up censorship, propaganda and the persecution of journalists in order to defend western freedom and democracy, is it really freedom and democracy? And is it worth defending?”
Prosecuting a journalist does not defend or protect our democracy? It undermines public trust in government and hinder the ability of the public to hold officials accountable for their actions’?
It is time to end the prosecution of Julian Assange and restore the reputation of the Justice Department.
We need to tell our government to drop all charges and free Julian Assange.
I hope you can join us at the Globe Monday, June 12 at 11am.
Add MAPA’s events to your Google Calendar! 1) Open Google Calendar on a computer. 2) Under “Other Calendars” on the left, press the small downward arrow. 3) Choose Add by URL, then enter this URL:
webcal://masspeaceaction.org/?post_type=tribe_events&ical=1&eventDisplay=list
Copyright (c) 2022 Massachusetts Peace Action