Freeing Assange: a Global Fight For Press Freedom
One of the biggest global fights for press freedom centers around an Australian hacker awaiting trial in the United Kingdom to prevent an extradition to the United States. Julian Assange — the man at the center of this story — has been incarcerated in Belmarsh, the U.K.’s highest security prison, since 2019. However, the story has been going on for even longer. Assange gained notoriety by founding Wikileaks, a non-profit that publishes classified government documents. Established in 2006, Wikileaks has leaked documents from around the globe and cooked up a storm by being involved in one of the biggest intelligence leaks in U.S. history.
The Afghan War Logs, handed to Assange and his team by Chelsea Manning, shot the hacker to global fame and set him off on a cat-and-mouse chase with Washington DC. The leaked information contained new and undisclosed details such as civilian casualties, accidents where U.S. forces mistakenly harmed their own, American airstrikes, the involvement of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the support provided by different countries to Afghan leaders and the Taliban. The information was put out to the public in collaboration with renowned news sources such as The Guardian, New York Times, and Der Spiegel.
The leaked documents showed that the Taliban was better equipped, and the U.S. military’s gear was less reliable than what the Pentagon had been saying. They also exposed a much higher number of civilian deaths than what was previously admitted by the U.S. government. Moreover, they revealed that U.S. authorities did not properly investigate hundreds of reports of misconduct by Iraqi police and soldiers, which included cases of abuse, torture, rape, and even murder. This came at a tough time as the war in Afghanistan had been going on for almost ten years, and public opinion on the U.S. ‘War Against Terror’ had been steadily falling.
WikiLeaks made public a video showing U.S. troops in a helicopter in Baghdad, callously reacting after killing a group of Iraqis, as well as two Reuters journalists. Assange wanted this video, known as Project B, to challenge the Army’s official version of events. He believed it exposed the harsh realities of modern warfare. Assange stated that when people saw this video, they would better understand the consequences of close air support engagements and how civilians often get labeled as insurgents, and bystander casualties are often ignored.
The impact of Assange’s discovery goes beyond U.S. politics. In nuclear-armed North Korea, Kim Jong II’s government discovered that its long-standing ally China might be shifting its support. According to the US Embassy cable leaks, China seemed to be open to the idea of reunifying the Korean peninsula under South Korean leadership in Seoul. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discovered from the leaks that despite his Arab neighbors publicly showing friendliness, they had been secretly asking the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear program.
However, these Hollywood-esque actions were not without consequences. US authorities filed 18 charges against Julian Assange for releasing confidential files via WikiLeaks. Assange and his ongoing chase with the US government has attracted an international audience over the years. In August 2010, Julian Assange faced an arrest warrant in Sweden over two separate sexual assault allegations, which he denied during questioning in Stockholm. The Swedish Prosecution Authority dropped the case in 2019 due to the weakening of evidence over the long duration of the case. Upon returning to the U.K., Assange feared extradition to Sweden and, subsequently, to the US, where he believed he could face charges related to WikiLeaks’ release of secret US government files. In December 2010, he attended a UK extradition hearing and was granted bail, but the courts ultimately ruled in favor of his extradition to Sweden. To avoid this, Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in August 2012, where he was granted political asylum. He remained there to evade arrest. In May 2017, Swedish authorities dropped their investigations, yet a British police warrant for his arrest for bail violation remained. In January 2018, Assange’s attempts to have the warrant canceled were unsuccessful, though his lawyers argued it had lost its purpose.
After Julian Assange was arrested in the UK, he faced charges in the state of Virginia for helping Chelsea Manning access classified documents. In May 2019, he was hit with more charges under the U.S. Espionage Act for collecting and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, which Manning had provided. This made Assange the first publisher in the world to be charged under this act. If Assange is extradited to the US and convicted under the Espionage Act, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison. On the less serious charge of computer intrusion, he could face a maximum of five years. On June 6th 2023, a UK High Court judge rejected Julian Assange’s request to appeal to the Supreme Court. The British Courts have the authority to reverse this decision or, Assange and may seek recourse in the European Court of Human Rights, although success is not guaranteed. Protests and petitions continue in the UK, backed by global support, in an effort to protect Assange and uphold press freedom. The final hearing date to block his extradition remains undisclosed.
If Assange is extradited and sentenced in the US, it could seriously threaten free speech rights and the work of investigative journalists worldwide. Amnesty International has warned that the impact on investigative journalists, publishers, and anyone sharing classified government material would be immediate and severe.
It is challenging to fully gauge the impact of Wikileaks on US and global politics. However, it is important for us to protect whistleblowers like Manning and Assange in a democracy. Achieving complete privacy while maintaining recognized citizenship is nearly impossible. In such circumstances, figures like Assange are necessary to step forward and ensure government accountability. A substantial power imbalance between governments and citizens who are supposed to be represented by these governments exists, and platforms like Wikileaks serve as a means to address this disparity. Assange’s battle is not a personal one. It calls out to people around the world who seek the truth from those in power to take a stand for freedom.
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Writer: Neha Tuheen
Editor: Shruti Bhat
