On Julian Assange's Birthday: SF Rally To Free Him & Mumia Abu-jamal

International Federation Of Journalists President Says "Free Julian Assange - Stop the Extradition!"

For the past decade the pursuit Julian Assange has consumed me with fear
– both for Wikileaks founder himself and for all the other journalists
who would suffer were he convicted. With his appeal against extradition
now rejected, the prospect of his trial in the United States is
desperately close.

Perhaps fresh legal instruments will present themselves to halt this
process – at the European Court of Human Rights, for example. Much the
better solution would be for the US government to realize the damage it is
doing, and drop this Trump-era prosecution.

The impact of Assange being jailed in the US would stifle the press at
every latitude and all points of the compass. His persecution has already
made nervous those journalists who rely on classified material. Should his
cell door clang shut for decades, any journalist handed sensitive
documents would fret. Whatever the evidence of wrong doing that had landed
in their lap, is it worth the risk?

Assange’s conviction would also endanger journalists whenever they travel
to countries hostile to the United States. Unsavory regimes will snatch
and imprison reporters with impunity. When challenged the despot’s answer
will be a shrug, and a nod to the cell holding the Wikileaks founder.
Perhaps Putin will never utter the words "Hey, we all lock up the
publishers of inconvenient truths", but is what his smile will say.

Assange’s case is full of misleading complications, contradictory
accounts, and prejudice masquerading as common sense. Opinions are skewed
by attitudes to the Iraq war; worries about Assange’s disputed conduct in
Sweden; and the role of Wikileaks in the election of Donald Trump. Against
a backdrop of such conjecture, sticking to what hard facts there are is
critical.

Foremost among these are the various incitements for which the US seeks to
prosecute Assange. All relate to the publications of the Iraqi and
Afghanistan "war logs" – vast information dumps of generally low-grade
operational detail from those conflicts. The resulting charges mostly
arise from the vaguely worded Espionage Act (ironically, the same
legislation under which Trump himself currently faces prosecution).

The case against Assange amounts to this. He sought out a confidential
source who had significant evidence of what they considered to be criminal
actions by the US military – including shooting down civilians and
journalists from a helicopter gunship. Assange is alleged to have coached
this individual in discreetly removing this material and then passing it,
via Wikileaks, to publishers who would reveal serious criminal actions to
the world.

To me, it is obvious that those are actions routinely undertaken by
investigative reporters. We would know much less about the war in Vietnam
were it not for classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. Woodward
and Bernstein’s account of the Watergate break in would have amounted to
little without a confidential source. The Panama papers, Paradise papers
and Lux Leaks would not have come to light without journalists and
whistleblowers.

If the US government does successfully prosecutes an Australian, who lives
in the UK, then the punitive global reach of the Department of Justice
will be cemented.

Viewing this process from Europe I am struck by the steady change in
opinion towards Assange, however.

He enjoyed a brief period as a poster boy, when major news organizations
lined up to make use of his material. After the 2010 publication of the
unreacted war logs – by a third party outside Assange’s control,
incidentally – he suffered a complete reverse. Former media partners
deserted him, Sweden sought his prosecution, and by 2012 he was holed up
in the Ecuador’s London embassy.

His fortunes fell further when his hosts of seven years abandoned him in
2019 and he was bundled off to the UK’s most high security prison, where
he languishes still.

Since then, however, and the publication of the US charges, support has
gradually returned. His former newspaper partners have revised their
views. Most have now published editorials calling for his release. And
many opinion formers who might not seem like natural Wikileaks supporters
have joined the chorus highlighting the dangers of this case. When I spoke
with people on the streets of London last year, I struggled to find anyone
with an adverse opinion of Assange.

A raft of disturbing evidence of the campaign against the Australian has
also come to light. His meetings with his lawyers were bugged, DNA samples
were stolen, and plans were hatched for a Putin-style "hit job" on the
streets of Kensington.

But President Biden’s government pursues the case.

The case increasingly reminds me of a famous French injustice, that of the
Alfred Dreyfus. He was a French army officer wrongly convicted in an
anti-semitic conspiracy, and imprisoned between 1894 and 1906. Today, no
one doubts that Dreyfus was appallingly wronged by a reactionary
establishment. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, there was
no more divisive issue in Europe. Scores of French institutions divided
themselves into new organizations, split between the Dreyfusards and their
opponents.

Like many other victims of injustice, I’m certain that a time will come
when the persecution of Assange will seem every bit as absurd as the case
against Dreyfus – or Mandela, or US journalist Evan Gershkovich,
currently wrongfully being held in a Moscow jail.

But that needn’t happen – and I hope that it won’t. But without a
clamor that brings the US Government to its senses we risk spending the
next few decades wondering why we did not speak up? Unless we find our
voices to resist, and raise our concerns wherever we can, a monstrous
injustice to an individual is in prospect, as is a grievous blow to press
freedom. On behalf of the 600,000 journalists around the world who I have
the honor to represent, please do not let that happen.

_DOMINIQUE PRADALIÉ IS PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF
JOURNALISTS_

Resolutions To Free Mumia and Julian Assange Passed By Membership Of PMWG On June 15, 2023 To Go To NewsGuild Convention & CWA Convention

Resolution:
NewsGuild and CWA Call for Freedom for Imprisoned Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal

Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former member of National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA) and a Philadelphia public radio journalist who exposed corruption and police abuse; and

Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal did not receive a fair trial when convicted of the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in a trial presided over by notorious racist judge Albert Sabo, and that his conviction resulted in large part because of the testimony of witnesses who later admitted to lying on the stand; and

Whereas, Abu-Jamal’s legal team has been denied the opportunity to present new evidence that could exonerate him; and

Whereas, Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death and spent decades on death row before his sentence was changed, and was saved from execution (in 1995 and 1999) by mass mobilization of his defenders in the US and internationally; and

Whereas, Abu-Jamal’s appeals in many cases have been denied on technicalities, including the recent (April 3, 2023) denial by Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Lucretia Clemons (a former attorney with union-busting law firm Ballard Spahr), who ruled it “immaterial” that the jury in the 1982 case never learned that the key witnesses at the trial had been bribed or coerced; and

Whereas, an Amicus brief from the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent noted that Abu-Jamal’s case exemplifies the systemic racism which has characterized the American judicial system from the inception of slavery to today; and

Whereas, Mumia has spoken out against the Prison-Industrial Complex, characterizing it as an attack on Labor; and

Whereas, the World Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in 2018 voted unanimously on a resolution calling for Abu-Jamal to be freed; and

Whereas, many unions and labor groups over the years have called for a new trial and/or freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, including United Educators of San Francisco, Pride at Work, the ILWU, and SEIU 1000;

Therefore be it resolved that the Pacific Media Workers Guild calls on the NewsGuild and CWA to support the call for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and to send letters to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro demanding the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal.



NewsGuild CWA Must Support Freedom for Journalist Julian Assange

Whereas, Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Asssange, a union journalist, has been imprisoned in England since 2019 and threatened with extradition to the United States for espionage; and

Whereas Julian Assange and Wikileaks provided important information to the American people about government and corporate corruption and exposed the role of the US in war crimes and violations of international law; and

Whereas, the International Federation of Journalists, The Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post have called for his freedom; and

Whereas the Australian Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance, of which Assange has been a member of since 2011, has opposed his extradition to the United States and supported his free return to Australia; and

Whereas US whistleblowers and journalists including the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of Press Foundation, Daniel Ellsberg, John Pilger, Glenn Greenwald, and James Risen have called for Julian Assange’s freedom; and

Whereas, the effort of the US government to extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he could face up to 175 years in prison if he is convicted, is a threat to journalists in the US and internationally;

Therefore be it resolved that the Pacific Media Workers Guild calls on the NewsGuild and CWA to support the call for freedom for Julian Assange, including sending letters to President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and the national news media.