Aussie leaders must raise their voice to free Assange

Unlike his predecessor Scott Morrison, incumbent Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been urging the Joe Biden administration to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been confined in the maximum security Belmarsh Prison in London since April 2019 while Washington seeks his extradition to the United States.

But Albanese's efforts were rejected on July 29 by visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said that Assange is accused of "very serious criminal conduct" for publishing classified US military documents in 2010 after US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked them to WikiLeaks.

Assange is facing 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and could be sentenced to as many as 175 years in a US maximum security prison if he is extradited to the US. The WikiLeaks founder lost his appeal in June against the extradition, triggering an outcry among his supporters around the world.

On Tuesday, asserting that his government stands firm against the US and its prosecution, Albanese said "this has gone on for too long", adding that "enough is enough". However, his remarks are far from being strong enough.

Amnesty International's message, for example, is much stronger. It said that the "authorities in the USA must drop the espionage and all other charges against Julian Assange".

The London-based group said "the US government's unrelenting pursuit of Julian Assange for having published disclosed documents that included possible war crimes committed by the US military is nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression", strong words that Albanese and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong dare not use in front of US officials. Wong only said that Australia wants the charges "brought to a conclusion", a very ambiguous message.

The US military cables released by WikiLeaks detailed war crimes committed by the US administration in the Guantanamo detention center, Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killing of civilians and two Reuters reporters and the CIA engaging in torture and rendition.

Worse, Yahoo News reported in 2021 that the CIA under then director Mike Pompeo had discussed abducting and assassinating Assange in 2017 while he was in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists has launched a campaign, calling on the US government to drop all charges against Assange and allowing him to return home to be with his wife and children.

The IFJ warned against the dire implications of the US' actions on press freedom, emphasizing that the punishment of Manning, who collaborated with Assange in releasing the US documents, was commuted by former US president Barack Obama. A point to be noted is that none of WikiLeaks' media partners has been charged in any US administration's legal proceeding.

The editors and publishers of the media partners of WikiLeaks, including The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Pais, wrote an open letter last year calling on the US to end its prosecution of Assange.

A group of Democratic lawmakers including Rashida Tlaib of Michigan sent a letter in April to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to drop all charges against Assange.

Albanese and Wong could also learn from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who described the arrest of Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression" way back in 2010 during his last term in office. And during his visit to London in May, Lula denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free Assange, saying "the guy is in prison because he denounced wrongdoing" and "the press doesn't do anything in defense of this journalist, I can't understand it".

Lula is right. It is shameful that most Western mainstream media outlets and Western politicians have not shown the guts to support Assange despite their hypocritical rhetoric on press freedom.

The author is chief of China Daily EU Bureau based in Brussels. chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn