Assange: The Transnational Threat to Speech

Assange urged Europe to protect its citizens and journalism from foreign secrecy laws.

Published: 2024-10-02

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On Tuesday 2024-10-01 Mr. Assange spoke before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Humanity

In Julian Assange's first major public meeting since obtaining his freedom he declared his humanity and compassion. He was not yet "fully equipped to speak about what [he] endured" during his incarceration. Nor could he "speak yet about the death by hanging, murder and medical neglect of [his] fellow prisoners".

One was immediately reminded of the statement which Craig Murray, former Ambassador, Wikileaks associate and friend of Mr. Assange, made when he was released from a Scottish prison in which he was also incarcerated for journalism [see Sources]. Murray's work exposed the prosecution of Scottish independence and political leader Alex Salmond as politically motivated and orchestrated.

Both spoke of the conditions of their fellow prisoners during their first opportunity to deliver a prepared public statement.

Just Journalism

Mr. Assange’s remarks to the committee stressed the precedent of the US legal charges which although filed against him, are a transnational threat to political speech and journalism:

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the [justice] system worked. I am free today, after years of incarceration, because I pled guilty to journalism.

I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.

I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable. As I emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period, how expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished.

I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government’s prosecution of me, it’s crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism, to the chilled climate for freedom of expression that exists now.

Mr. Assange addressed a core topic of the report soon to be presented by General Rapporteur for political prisoners Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland) for which the PACE committee's meeting was convened; the repression of speech and political expression, and the assault on publishing facts.

Collateral Murder and Covert Policy

When I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream to educate people about how the world works, so that through understanding, we might bring about something better.

Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go. Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none. We obtained and published truth about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of assassination, rendition, torture and mass surveillance. We revealed not just when and where these things happened, but frequently the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them.

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun-camera footage of a U.S. Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world. But, we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the U.S. military could deploy lethal force in Iraq and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval.

In fact, 40 years of my potential 175 year sentence was for obtaining and releasing those policies.

Shrinking and Attacking the US Constitution

President Obama’s Justice Department chose not to indict me, recognizing that no crime had been committed. The United States had never before prosecuted a publisher for publishing or obtaining government information. To do so would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Former US Senator, Democratic Party Presidential Candidate and Secretary of State John Kerry is currently pursuing that reinterpretation. On 2024-09-29 at a World Economic Forum (WEF ) gathering he said:

... our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it [disinformation] out of existence.

— John Kerry [quoted in RealClear Politics]

For Kerry, disinformation is political opinion which makes it "harder to build consensus".

State Abuse by Intelligence Service

By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA’s infiltration of fringe political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, European economic ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole. We revealed the CIA’s vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones. [Wikileaks' Vault 7 release]

CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that, under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and authorize going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information. My wife and my infant son were also targeted.

A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son’s nappy. This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former U.S. intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in the prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.

The CIA's targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive, extrajudicial and extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organizations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique.

What is unique is that we know so much about this one, due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.

Mr. Assange's emphasis was not that the CIA targeted him and his family and colleagues. Rather, because of efforts made to investigate the CIA's crimes, the public has obtained a detailed account of the actions the CIA takes to oppress.

There remains a ghastly, continued parallel. None of the war criminals revealed in Wikileaks' publications have been charged, let alone brought to justice. Only the whistleblowers and publisher have seen a court, charged effectively with revealing the secrets of government employees, their crimes. The same "prosecution of whistleblowers and publishers" is true for the CIA's crimestoo. To obtain his freedom from lawfare, augmented by the CIA (US government) spying on legal meetings and paying for false testimony from a convicted fraudster and pedophile (Sigurd Thordanson), Assange had to plead — guilty of journalism, guilty of publishing authentic documents.

Wikileaks has a perfect record in its publishing. All of its publications are authentic documents. This is why Mr. Assange was psychologically tortured and incarcerated.

The US, particularly its Central Intelligence Agency, could not permit the success of an innovative method of exposing crimes via publishing the secrets it failed to keep.

The “secret” documents which describe unknown crimes are legal. Publishing them is not.

The Transnational Threat to Speech

... the U.S. government asserted a dangerous new global legal position: Only U.S. citizens have free speech rights. […] Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights, but the U.S. claims its Espionage Act still applies to them, regardless of where they are. So, Europeans in Europe must obey the U.S. secrecy law with no defenses at all.

As far as the U.S. government is concerned, an American in Paris can talk about what the U.S. government is up to, perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime with no defense, and he may be extradited, just like me.

Now that one foreign government has formally asserted that Europeans have no free speech rights, a dangerous precedent has been set. Other powerful states will inevitably follow suit. [...] The rights of journalists and publishers within the European space are seriously threatened.

Transnational repression cannot become the norm here. As one of the world’s two great norms, setting institutions, PACE must act.

The criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking, for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power, while I was in Europe.

The fundamental issue is simple. Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.

Journalism is not a crime. It is a pillar of a free and informed society.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates, if Europe is to have a future where the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few, but rights guaranteed to all, then it must act, so what has happened in my case, never happens to anyone else.

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Sources

Assange: ‘I’m Free Because I Pled Guilty to Journalism’ / Assange: 'My Naivete Was Believing in the Law', Julian Assange [Machine generated transcript of his statements to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights], Consortium News, 2024-10-01

• The quotes used in the article above are based on this transcript, editted to improve clarity and correct obvious machine errors. Aplogies in advance, if I’ve missed any.

Craig Murray is Released: The UK Scores an Own Goal, YesXorNo, 2021-12-01

Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment, Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson & Gunnar Hrafn Jónsson, Studin, 2021-06-26 [https://stundin.is/grein/13627/key-witness-in-assange-case-admits-to-lies-in-indictment/]

Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed, Wikileaks, 2017-03-07

John Kerry Tells WEF: Our First Amendment Stands As A Major Block Against Hammering Disinformation Out Of Existence, Tim Hains, RealClear Politics, 2024-09-29

WATCH: Assange's Testimony in Strasbourg -- LIVE!, Consortium News, 2024-09-30

Craig Murray's full statement after being released from Saughton Prison, Edinurgh, Alba Party, their youtube channel, 2021-11-30

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