Assange: Free at last!

Written by: Nick G. on 25 June 2024

 

(Above: Rally in London in February 2024 demands Assange's release)

Imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange is free - bar the formality of an appearance before a US court in the US Marianas Islands tomorrow.

In a plea deal struck with the US authorities, Assange has agreed to plead guilty to one charge under the US Espionage Act. His sentencing is likely to include a jail term which will be subsumed within the time he has already spent in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison.

Assange’s release is a victory for the many people here and abroad who have campaigned for his release and for the dropping of US charges against him.

Though some might see his release as a victory for Albanese and Wong’s “quiet diplomacy”, it rather reflects their abject failure to stand up to the US and secure Assange’s unconditional release.

Worse, by making it a condition of his release by pleading guilty to a crime of which he is innocent, the US imperialists have created a precedent for the citizen of any foreign country to be charged, tried and convicted under US laws. 

This is a threat to political activists and journalists of all countries who use US sources to expose US crimes.

This is not to criticise Assange. He has been held hostage by the British inside a jail designed to house murderers and terrorists, and subjected to inhuman conditions, pending a threatened extradition to the US.

Our Party has supported Assange since he first faced charges.  In 2012, we wrote:

HANDS OFF ASSANGE!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have performed a huge service to the people of the world by providing a platform for the publication of information that our rulers want kept from us.

Information released to date substantiates US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existence of death squads and corruption in Kenya, of crony capitalism and speculative manipulation behind the financial collapse of Iceland and of unethical behaviour on the part of Sarah Palin.

Closer to home, Kevin Rudd has been outed as a cheerleader for the use of force by the US against China. In his March 24, 2009 advice to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the then Prime Minister called for a readiness to “deploy force” unless China “integrated itself effectively into the international community”. This is tantamount to declaring that China’s diplomatic pursuit of its own national interests, particularly if they challenge US global leadership, is the action of a rogue state that must be dealt with militarily.

Agents of imperialism

Wikileaks has revealed the existence of senior Labor politicians who report to the US embassy on matters that they are not even prepared to share with the Australian public. It is a master-servant relationship that stinks to high Heaven.

Julia Gillard’s condemnation of Assange represents the sacrificing of yet another Australian civilian to the interests of the US imperialists. 

We remain of the view that Assange has performed a huge service to the people of the world, and that if anyone should be in the dock, then it should be the US imperialist warmongers and assassins and those who collaborate with them.  

It now remains for Albanese and Attorney-General Dreyfus to turn their attention to Dan Duggan, the US-born Australian citizen who has been locked in solitary confinement for 20 months in Australian jails despite facing no charges in Australia while the US attempts to have him extradited to face charges in the US.

Assange is out, now let us get Duggan out.