Australian MPs vote ‘overwhelmingly’ in favor of freedom for Julian Assange
The Australian federal parliament vote comes one week ahead of Assange’s next hearing in the UK
Australian MPs, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and members of his cabinet, have voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of urging the US and UK to allow embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to return to his home country of Australia.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie praised the vote as “an unprecedented show of political support for Assange by the Australian parliament.”
Wilkie added that it was “time for all of us to take a stand” and support the motion.
The federal parliament vote on 14 January saw 86 in favor of freeing Assange and 42 against. It comes ahead of Assange’s upcoming hearing in the UK High Court on 21 February, which will determine whether he can continue his case in UK courts.
If unsuccessful, he will have exhausted his appeals in the UK, which would lead to the start of his extradition to the US.
Assange’s lawyers have filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights, which could possibly block the extradition.
Amnesty International said on 14 February that the upcoming hearing will put global media freedom “on trial.”
“The risk to publishers and investigative journalists around the world hangs in the balance. Should Julian Assange be sent to the US and prosecuted there, global media freedoms will be on trial, too,” said Julia Hall, the organization’s criminal justice expert in Europe.
“Assange will suffer personally from these politically-motivated charges and the worldwide media community will be on notice that they too are not safe. The public’s right to information about what their governments are doing in their name will be profoundly undermined. The US must drop the charges under the espionage act against Assange and bring an end to his arbitrary detention in the UK,” she added.
The WikiLeaks founder has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019.
Assange is charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for releasing classified US military documents that implicate Washington in war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently referred to the Assange case as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.”
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. Four years later, the non-profit publisher released a leaked video from inside a US helicopter as it carried out an attack on civilians and journalists in Iraq.
“Light em’ all up … keep shootin’ … look at those dead bastards,” US service members are heard saying in the clip as the helicopter opened fire.
That same year, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of US documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as thousands of US diplomatic cables.
In 2012, Assange took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy and asked for asylum after losing a legal battle for extradition to Sweden, where he was falsely accused of rape. Ecuador granted him asylum that year.
Ecuador revoked his asylum in 2019, and he was dragged out of the embassy and arrested. Washington formally requested his extradition later that year.
Assange has become a symbol of freedom of the press. Many globally believe it was in the public interest for WikiLeaks to publish information on war crimes and that Assange is being persecuted for political reasons.