Justice for Assange

Australia

Australians: how to take practical Action to support Julian Assange - see the updated page for taking Action.

Without the help of his government, Mr Assange may well be in grave danger - Gareth Peirce letter to Kevin Rudd, 25 October 2011

So... is the Australian government protecting citizen Assange?

[What has the Australian Government done to protect Assange these past months? Almost nothing. - Tony Kevin, retired Australian diplomat http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/arti...]

News:

19 December 2011: Open Letter to Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, signed by high level supporters including former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Lance Collins, Australian Intelligence Corps. See also the accompanying article by former president of Liberty Victoria, Michael Pearce, SC

18 December 2011: Government unlikely to aid Assange - Sydney Morning Herald

14 December 2010: Julian Assange’s clear and present danger

10 December 2011: Senator Scott Ludlum of the Australian Greens writes about attending the High Court appeal decision on 5 December and on Julian Assange

3 December 2011: Diary of a Wiki emergency, Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald

3 December 2011: US targets WikiLeaks like no other organisation Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald

24 November 2011: Greens Senator Ludlum speaks to the press after Government and opposition refuse to hear question to Prime Minister regarding Julian Assange. As a courtesy Senator Ludlum had advised PM Gillard’s representative, Senator Evans, of his intention and the scope of his question regarding whether the government would prevent the extradition of Assange to the US. He was prevented from asking the question from the floor due to an Opposition censure motion. He has demanded a formal written response. Hear the press conference here and read about it http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national....

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam tried to question the Prime Minister about Assange before Parliament rose for the summer break, but was blocked by an opposition censure motion.- [Tony Kevin, retired Australian diplomat http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/arti...]

The questions submitted to the PM Julia Gillard by Senator Ludlum were as follows:

1. Was the US probe into WikiLeaks and Julian Assange raised whether formally or informally with President Obama or members of his delegation to Australia? If so in what manner and by who and what assurances for information were requested and what was the US response.

2. Has the government used what was apparently known as the “Wikileaks Bill” within the AG Dept., aka the Intelligence Amendment Bill, to spy on Wikileaks or its people or has the recent MOU with the US on data sharing information on Australian Citizens who are said to have committed or will commit crimes for which there is a penalty for 4 years or above been used to this end?

3. Will the Australian Government prevent Mr. Assange being further extradited from Sweden to the United States for doing what the media have always done which is bring to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret.

24 November 2011: Rudd responds to Senator Ludlum’s questions. See Assange and Rudd: the government’s strange lack of curiosity, Bernard Keane, 24 November 2011]

22 November 2011: Greens Senator Ludlum asked Kevin Rudd why the questions posed over 30 days ago have not yet been answered:

"Mr Assange was recognised as a journalist by the High Court of the UK. As a journalist and, through WikiLeaks, as a publisher, he has broken no law, just as the people who put his material on the front page of the Age and the New York Times have broken no law. My questions, to which the answers are now just slightly overdue, seek to clarify what our government has done and what our government is prepared to do to ensure that he is not subject to rendition to the United States, where, as we know, his life is under threat. There has been speculation that Mr Assange would be extradited to the United States from Sweden, but extradition requests, as we know, come with safeguards. We are much more concerned that, under a bilateral agreement between Sweden and the US, he could be transferred without any due process at all-a form of soft rendition known as temporary surrender. What happens once he gets there?" - Senator Ludlum in Canberra, 22 November 2011.

Assange case: it’s time for Gillard to ask Obama some important questions, Jennifer Robinson, Crikey, 17 November 2011

Is Australia Protecting its Citizen from a Politically Motivated Extradition to the United States?

Australia will have to evaluate its own extradition obligations. - US Ambassador to Australia ahead of Obama’s visit, November 2011

• Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Foreign Minister, was contacted directly by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on November 25 2010, two days before Cablegate was first published. The Gillard government was faced with "legal ambiguity" over whether ASIO, the Australian Intelligence Agency, could collect intelligence on WikiLeaks under its foreign intelligence collection function. The issue turned on whether WikiLeaks could be defined as a ’’foreign political organisation’’.

• The government solved this by proposing what was unofficially called the ’WikiLeaks Amendment", legislation that redefined the role of the Australian Intelligence Agency ASIO. The government stated that the amendment reflected ’’the changing nature of threats to Australia, since activities undertaken by non-state actors, whether individually or as a group, can also threaten Australia’s national interest’’. In a television show Q&A, Julian Assange challenges Prime Minister Julia Gillard directly on spying on its own citizens to further the government’s perceived foreign policy goals:

• Attorney General Robert McClelland said that the Australian government was considering cancelling Julian Assange’s passport. The Attorney General decided against it because canceling it would be "counter-productive to remove the identification that would in fact trigger the law-enforcement process" (4 December 2010)

"We have also indicated that we will provide every assistance to United States law-enforcement authorities." - Robert McClelland, Australia’s Attorney General (4 December 2010)

• Prime Minister Julia Gillard alleged that WikiLeaks had acted ’illegally’ and instructed the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to investigate whether criminal charges could be laid against Julian Assange. When the investigation concluded, after only 17 days, that WikiLeaks had not broken any Australian law, Gillard insisted that that the foundation stone of the WikiLeaks disclosures “is an illegal act that breached the laws of the United States of America”, referring to the whistleblower/source.

The AFP has completed its evaluation of the material available and has not established the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction.- Press Release by the Australian Federal Police 17 December 2010

Gillard was playing the same game as the US State Department who, knowing that it would be difficult or impossible to indict Julian Assange and WikiLeaks when their publishing activities are protected by the First Amendment, instead imply that publishing ’illegally obtained material’ somehow contaminates the organisation - legally, this argument is indefensible.

In relation to the specific issue of the grand jury investigation, however, Rudd’s answer was somewhat more cryptic. "The Australian government has no formal advice of any grand jury investigation," is all he would state, leaving open the possibility the issue had been raised informally or at officials’ level. - Bernard Keane, Crikey 24 November 2011

I confess to holding out some hope for Rudd who, unlike the Prime Minister and Attorney General, knew he was obliged to presume Julian Assange innocent before proven guilty. Instead of threatening to cancel this Australian passport, the Foreign Minister said publicly that his responsibility was to attend to his legal and consular rights. - Senator Scott Ludlum, Australian Greens, Why Julian Assange Could Be You, New Matilda (3 November 2011)

Criticisms of Julia Gillard

[The Gillard government has] just treated [Julian Assange’s case in Sweden] like a standard consular issue, which is really quite inappropriate given the heavy politics surrounding it. - Tony Kevin, veteran Australian Diplomat

"Gillard should have demonstrated her commitment to the rights of Australian citizens and to the independence of Australia from other jurisdictions. Instead she delivered an ill-considered and prejudiced response, devoid of independent thinking or moral compass. Both her desire to shirk responsibility and her demonstrably bad judgement have come home to roost." Haigh and Tranter, 17 December 2010

WikiLeaks won the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism on 27 November 2011. In his acceptance speech, Julian Assange criticises Julia Gillard’s role in persecution the organisation and him personally

While the world watches events unfold in London, we have a singular responsibility here in Australia for the protection the citizenship entitlements of one of our own. The next move is squarely in the court of the Australian Government. - Senator Scott Ludlum, Australian Greens, Why Julian Assange Could Be You, New Matilda (3 November 2011)

Rudd also handpassed several matters to Attorney-General Robert McClelland, saying the issue of whether ASIO could now spy on Assange under the "WikiLeaks amendment" passed earlier this year to expand its powers, and issues to do with the possibility of Assange being extradited from Australia, were matters for McClelland. Bernard Keane, Crikey 24 November 2011

Criticisms of Australia’s position in relation to Sweden

"Gillard should have sent, and still needs to send, a message to Sweden first querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor; second, expressing Australia’s concern that contentious Swedish action has had one of our citizens in solitary confinement in an English prison, and third, expressing Australia’s concern that as an Australian citizen Mr Assange has his case dealt with expeditiously and with due legal process." Haigh and Tranter, 17 December 2010

If Mr Assange is sent to Sweden for questioning on alleged offences unrelated to the work of WikiLeaks, the Australian Government should ensure he is not then shuttled to the United States to face concocted political charges under the draconian, First World War-era Espionage Act, aimed at destroying the whistle-blowing website. - Senator Ludlum, MP for the Australian Greens in Parliament

Criticisms of Australia’s position in relation to the US

Malcolm Turnbull (Member of the Australian Parliament), excerpt of Turnbull’s speech to the Sydney University School of Law, April 2011:

"The High Court was very clear in declaring that an Australian Court should not act “to protect the intelligence secrets and confidential political information” of a foreign government, even one which was a very friendly one and even in circumstances where the Australian Government requested the Court to do so.

I stress this point because it has a current relevance to the case of Julian Assange who you will remember our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, described as someone who had broken the law by publishing the contents of confidential US State Department cables.

Not only was it perfectly obvious that Julian Assange had broken no Australian law (and despite the strenuous efforts of the American authorities there is no evidence to date he has broken any American ones) but the decision of the High Court in Spycatcher make it quite clear that any action in an Australian court to restrain Assange from publishing the State Department cables would have failed.

Jennifer Robinson - The Wikileaks Experience from CaTV on Vimeo.

(contd) These remarks by the Prime Minister which were echoed by her Attorney General were particularly regrettable, not simply because she was so obviously in error from a legal point of view, but whatever one may think of Assange he is an Australian citizen.

More importantly perhaps, at the time he was being described as breaking the law by Ms Gillard, prominent American politicians and journalists were describing him as a terrorist and in some cases calling for him to be assassinated.

Sarah Palin, possibly the next US President, called for him to be pursued “with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” No doubt her supporters were able to read what they liked into that remark.

While Assange is no doubt quite safe from assassination, when an Australian citizen is threatened in this way, an Australian Prime Minister should respond.

Julia Gillard could have quite properly deplored his publishing of confidential information, sympathised with our embarrassed American allies, but at the same time registered our profound unhappiness that an Australian citizen is being threatened in this way by leading figures in another country whose commitment to freedom of speech and the rule of law we traditionally regard as being no less than our own.

She might even have taken the time to ask how on earth the United States security arrangements were so slack that hundreds of thousands of highly confidential documents could be copied onto a disk by a 23 year old US Army Private, Bradley Manning." (Read the whole speech here or listen to the podcast)

Criticisms of Australia’s position in relation to Britain

Haigh and Tranter:

Britain needs a nudge. Gillard has to ensure Britain resists US pressure. Haigh and Tranter, 17 December 2010

Correspondence between Assange’s lawyer and Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd - October/November 2011

Letter: Gareth Peirce to Minister Rudd

The problem with the "official" line is people just don’t buy that this persecution of Assange is not politically motivated. - Haigh and Tranter, 17 December 2010

Letter: Minister Rudd to Gareth Peirce

Open Letter to Julia Gillard - 7 December 2010

Dear Prime Minister,

We note with concern the increasingly violent rhetoric directed towards Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

“We should treat Mr Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets: Kill him,” writes conservative columnist Jeffrey T Kuhner in the Washington Times.

William Kristol, former chief of staff to vice president Dan Quayle, asks, “Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?”

“Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?” writes the prominent US pundit Jonah Goldberg.

“The CIA should have already killed Julian Assange,” says John Hawkins on the Right Wing News site.

Sarah Palin, a likely presidential candidate, compares Assange to an Al Qaeda leader; Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator and potential presidential contender, accuses Assange of “terrorism”.

And so on and so forth.

Such calls cannot be dismissed as bluster. Over the last decade, we have seen the normalisation of extrajudicial measures once unthinkable, from ‘extraordinary rendition’ (kidnapping) to ‘enhanced interrogation’ (torture).

In that context, we now have grave concerns for Mr Assange’s wellbeing.

Irrespective of the political controversies surrounding WikiLeaks, Mr Assange remains entitled to conduct his affairs in safety, and to receive procedural fairness in any legal proceedings against him.

As is well known, Mr Assange is an Australian citizen.

We therefore call upon you to condemn, on behalf of the Australian Government, calls for physical harm to be inflicted upon Mr Assange, and to state publicly that you will ensure Mr Assange receives the rights and protections to which he is entitled, irrespective of whether the unlawful threats against him come from individuals or states.

We urge you to confirm publicly Australia’s commitment to freedom of political communication; to refrain from cancelling Mr Assange’s passport, in the absence of clear proof that such a step is warranted; to provide assistance and advocacy to Mr Assange; and do everything in your power to ensure that any legal proceedings taken against him comply fully with the principles of law and procedural fairness.

A statement by you to this effect should not be controversial – it is a simple commitment to democratic principles and the rule of law.

We believe this case represents something of a watershed, with implications that extend beyond Mr Assange and WikiLeaks. In many parts of the globe, death threats routinely silence those who would publish or disseminate controversial material. If these incitements to violence against Mr Assange, a recipient of Amnesty International’s Media Award, are allowed to stand, a disturbing new precedent will have been established in the English-speaking world.

In this crucial time, a strong statement by you and your Government can make an important difference.

We look forward to your response.

Signed (see original).

News

• Conversation with the American Ambassador to Australia: Mimic with a fine ear for detail Anne Davies, Merimbula News Weekly (12 November 2011)

• WikiLeaks founder ’abandoned’ by government’ Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald (8 November 2011)

• Wikileaks’ Assange must be protected William Schaub (7 November 2011)

• Julian Assange’s lawyers call on Australia to step in over extradition Bonnie Malkin Daily Telegraph (3 November 2011)

• Government and Opposition throw Assange to the wolves Media release, The Australian Greens (2 November 2011)

• Gillard slow to read WikiLeaks briefings Philip Dorling, The Age (24 May 2011)

• ASIO Eye on WikiLeaks Philip Dorling, The Age, 23 May 2011

• Gillard says she won’t make Assange’s legal problems go away Sydney Morning Herald (11 February 2011)

• Australia’s Complicity in Stifling Assange