Assange is free at last but the Press is not.

JVL Introduction

Below we publish the Guardian’s editorial on the long awaited release of Julian Assange that emphasises that the fight for Press Freedom is far from over while we also remember that the Guardian has failed to show the courage that was needed to support Assange. In September 2020 we published Jonathan Cook’s article on  “The Guardian’s abject failure to speak out”  and noted that “Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States.”

We also draw attention to an article written by Alan Rushbridger, then editor of the Guardian over thirteen years ago and a little less than a year before Julian Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in which he said: “One of the lessons from the WikiLeaks project is that it has shown the possibilities of collaboration. It’s difficult to think of any comparable example of news organisations working together in the way the Guardian, New York Times, Der Speigel, Le Monde and El País have on the WikiLeaks project. …In the UK there was only muted criticism of the Guardian for publishing the leaks, though their restraint did not always extend to WikiLeaks itself. Most journalists could see the clear public value in the nature of the material that was published.”

It is also important to remember that Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was imprisoned for seven years following a Court Martial for leaking the documents to WikiLeaks and imprisoned again from for a year from March 8, 2019 for contempt. She was also fined $256,000 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Julian Assange.

Now as the Guardian recognises, Assange is finally free but only after pleading guilty to a significant charge, even though, for example, no evidence has been found showing that anyone has been harmed because of the leaked information and also that none of the people behind the war crimes that he exposed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been prosecuted.

We wish Julian Assange and his family the time to recuperate and to reconnect.  Assange has done more than his bit to hold the most powerful to account, but we have to ask, what journalist and what whistleblowers will take the risks that Assange – and Manning – took when the price is this high?

LL

This article was originally published by The Guardian on Tue 25 Jun 2024. Read the original here.