Julian
Assange’s recente speech bij de Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe (PACE) in Straatsburg is een waarschuwing voor de alarmerende
teloorgang van fundamentele vrijheden die in onze pers en ons denken
oorverdovend zou moeten nagalmen, maar die waarschijnlijk vooral met
stilte zal worden begroet.
Fundamentele
vrijheden die essentieel zijn voor een functionerende democratie. De
bedreiging voor de journalistiek die Assange omschrijft, gaat hand in
hand met een bredere, verontrustende trend waarin westerse overheden,
wereldwijde NGO’s en allerlei globalistische denktanks, hand in hand met
grote corporates de vrijheid van meningsuiting steeds vaker
onderdrukken in hun kennelijke strijd met de door henzelf gedefinieerde
kennelijke mis- en disinformatie. Oftewel: informatie die ongewenst
wordt geacht door de zittende macht.
“Wanneer
waarheid als een bedreiging wordt gezien, loopt niet alleen de
journalistiek gevaar, maar wordt de hele democratische basis van onze
moderne open samenlevingen ondermijnd.”
De
mogelijkheid van burgers om informatie te vergaren, te delen en
daarover te kunnen debatteren, is onlosmakelijk verbonden met een
functionerende democratie.
"Ik
ben vandaag niet vrij omdat het systeem werkte. Ik ben vrij omdat ik na
jaren van opsluiting schuldig pleitte aan journalistiek. Ik pleitte
schuldig aan het zoeken naar informatie bij een bron. Ik pleitte
schuldig aan het verkrijgen van informatie van een bron. En ik pleitte
schuldig aan het informeren van het publiek over wat die informatie
was."
Op
schrijnende wijze legt Assange de fundamentele misstanden bloot binnen
de systemen die geacht worden onze rechten te beschermen. Zijn vrijheid
komt niet voort uit gerechtigheid, maar uit een gedwongen compromis met
een systeem dat journalistiek heeft gecriminaliseerd. Dit is méér dan
een aanval op de pers; het is een aanval op de vrijheid van
meningsuiting. Wanneer het zoeken naar en delen van informatie wordt
bestraft, worden burgers monddood gemaakt en wordt de waarheid
onderdrukt. Dit raakt de kern van waarom hij ooit WikiLeaks oprichtte.
"Toen
ik WikiLeaks oprichtte, werd het gedreven door een simpele droom:
mensen leren hoe de wereld werkt, zodat we door begrip misschien iets
beters kunnen bereiken."
Deze
westerse droom, waarin transparantie en kennis centraal staan, ligt al
decennia steeds meer onder vuur. Het recht om te weten en te begrijpen
wat er in de wereld gebeurt, wordt niet alleen belemmerd door censuur,
maar door een toenemende criminalisering van informatieverspreiding.
Als staten journalistiek
kunnen bestempelen als misdaad, betekent dat ook dat vrijheid van
meningsuiting voor iedereen op het spel staat. Zonder de vrije stroom
van informatie verliezen burgers het vermogen om machthebbers ter
verantwoording te roepen, wat essentieel is voor een gezonde democratie.
Dit leidt al jaren tot steeds heftiger gevolgen voor iedereen die zich
uitspreekt, niet alleen journalisten. Gevolgen die uiteenlopen van het
buiten de groep worden geplaatst, smaad en laster, bedreigingen, tot het
verliezen vrienden, van zakelijke opdrachten, van je baan, het worden
ge-debankt (door je bank worden afgesloten), ge-defund (door je bank je
toegang tot je geld worden ontzegd of door payment providers worden
geweigerd), ge-deplatformd (verwijderd van (sociale) media platforms als
LinkedIn, X, Facebook, maar ook Youtube, Spotify, Google, et).
"De
criminalisering van nieuwe activiteiten voor het verzamelen van nieuws
vormt een bedreiging voor onderzoeksjournalistiek overal."
Wat
er op het spel staat, zijn de fundamenten van onze vrije samenleving.
De impact reikt veel verder dan de pers; het is een directe aanslag op
onze diepste democratische waarden. Op iedereen die kritisch denkt, zich
uitspreekt of informatie deelt. Democratie kan alleen floreren wanneer
burgers vrij zijn om zonder angst voor vervolging de waarheid te zoeken
en te verspreiden.
Lees
onderstaand de ontluisterende woorden in de volledige getuigenis van
Julian Assange voor de Parlementaire Vergadering van de Raad van Europa
(PACE) in Straatsburg op woensdag 2 oktober 2024:
"Mr. Chairman, esteemed members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ladies and gentlemen.
The
transition from years of confinement in a maximum-security prison to
standing here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million
people is a profound and surreal shift. The experience of isolation for
years in a small cell is difficult to convey; it strips away one's sense
of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence. I am not yet fully
equipped to speak about what I have endured - the relentless struggle to
stay alive, both physically and mentally, nor can i speak yet about the
deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.
I
apologise in advance if my words falter or if my presentation lacks the
polish you might expect in such a distinguished forum. Isolation has
taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind, and expressing myself in
this setting is a challenge. However, the gravity of this occasion and
the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations
and speak to you directly. I have traveled a long way, literally and
figuratively, to be before you today. Before our discussion or answering
any questions you might have, I wish to thank PACE for its 2020
resolution (2317), [https://pace.coe.int/en/files/28508/html…],
which stated that my imprisonment set a dangerous precedent for
journalists and noted that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture called
for my release. I'm also grateful for PACE's 2021 statement [https://pace.coe.int/en/news/8446/pace-general-rapporteur-expresses-se…] expressing concern over credible reports that US officials discussed my assassination, again calling for my prompt release.
And
I commend the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee for
commissioning a renowned rapporteur, Sunna Ævarsdóttir, to investigate
the circumstances surrounding my detention and conviction and the
consequent implications for human rights.
However,
like so many of the efforts made in my case - whether they were from
parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, the Pope, UN officials
and diplomats, unions, legal and medical professionals, academics,
activists, or citizens - none of them should have been necessary. None
of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events,
fundraisers, protests, and letters over the last 14 years should have
been necessary. But all of them were necessary because without them I
never would have seen the light of day.
This
unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections
that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any
remotely reasonable time frame. I eventually chose freedom over
unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175
year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded,
as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I
cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a
Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request over what it did to me as a
result of its extradition request.
I
want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system
worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I
plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a
source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I
plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did
not plead guilty to anything else. I hope my testimony today can serve
to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those
whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable. As I
emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less
discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time
period when expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked,
weakened, and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more
retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard
not to draw a line from the US government's prosecution of me - its
crossing the rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism - to
the chilled climate for freedom of expression now.
When
I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream: to educate people
about how the world works so that, through understanding, we might
bring about something better. Having a map of where we are lets us
understand where we might go. Knowledge empowers us to hold power to
account and to demand justice where there is none.
We
obtained and published truths about tens of thousands of hidden
casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of
assassination, rendition, torture, and mass surveillance. We revealed
not just when and where these things happened but frequently the
policies, the agreements, and structures behind them.
When
we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US
Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and
their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world.
But we also used interest in this video to direct people to the
classified policies for when the US military could deploy lethal force
in Iraq and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher
approval. In fact, 40 years of my potential 175-year sentence was for
obtaining and releasing these policies.
The
practical political vision I was left with after being immersed in the
world's dirty wars and secret operations is simple: Let us stop gagging,
torturing, and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals
right and other political, economic, and scientific processes will have
space to take care of the rest. WikiLeaks' work was deeply rooted in the
principles that this Assembly stands for. Journalism that elevated
freedom of information and the public's right to know found its natural
operational home in Europe. I lived in Paris and we had formal corporate
registrations in France and in Iceland. Our journalistic and technical
staff were spread throughout Europe. We published to the world from
servers in based in France, Germany, and Norway.
But
14 years ago the United States military arrested one of our alleged
whistleblowers, PFC Manning, a US intelligence analyst based in Iraq.
The US government concurrently launched an investigation against me and
my colleagues. The US government illicitly sent planes of agents to
Iceland, paid bribes to an informer to steal our legal and journalistic
work product, and without formal process pressured banks and financial
services to block our subscriptions and freeze our accounts. The UK
government took part in some of this retribution. It admitted at the
European Court of Human Rights that it had unlawfully spied on my UK
lawyers during this time. Ultimately this harassment was legally
groundless.
President
Obama's Justice Department chose not to indict me, recognizing that no
crime had been committed. The United States had never before prosecuted a
publisher for publishing or obtaining government information. To do so
would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the US
Constitution. In January 2017, Obama also commuted the sentence of
Manning, who had been convicted of being one of my sources. However, in
February 2017, the landscape changed dramatically. President Trump had
been elected. He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats: Mike Pompeo, a
Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive, as CIA Director,
and William Barr, a former CIA officer, as US Attorney General.
By
March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA's infiltration of French
political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying
on the European Central Bank, European economics ministries, and its
standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole. We revealed the
CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply
chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and
iPhones.
CIA
Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter
of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up
plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in
London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us
to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information.
My
wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently
assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from
my six month old son's nappy. This is the testimony of more than 30
current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press,
which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a
prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.
The
CIA's targeting of myself, my family and my associates through
aggressive extrajudicial and extraterritorial means provides a rare
insight into how powerful intelligence organisations engage in
transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is
unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous
whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.
This
Assembly is no stranger to extraterritorial abuses by the CIA. PACE's
groundbreaking report on CIA renditions in Europe exposed how the CIA
operated secret detention centres and conducted unlawful renditions on
European soil, violating human rights and international law.
In
February this year, the alleged source of some of our CIA revelations,
former CIA officer Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to forty years in
prison under conditions of extreme isolation. His windows are blacked
out, and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so
that he cannot even shout through it. These conditions are more severe
than those found in Guantanamo Bay. Transnational repression is also
conducted by abusing legal processes. The lack of effective safeguards
against this means that Europe is vulnerable to having its mutual legal
assistance and extradition treaties hijacked by foreign powers to go
after dissenting voices in Europe.
In
Mike Pompeo's memoirs, which I read in my prison cell, the former CIA
Director bragged about how he pressured the US Attorney General to bring
an extradition case against me in response to our publications about
the CIA. Indeed, acceding to Pompeo's efforts, the US Attorney General
reopened the investigation against me that Obama had closed and
re-arrested Manning, this time as a witness. Manning was held in prison
for over a year and fined a thousand dollars a day in a formal attempt
to coerce her into providing secret testimony against me. She ended up
attempting to take her own life.
We
usually think of attempts to force journalists to testify against their
sources. But Manning was now a source being forced to testify against
their journalist.
By
December 2017, CIA Director Pompeo had got his way, and the US
government issued a warrant to the UK for my extradition. The UK
government kept the warrant secret from the public for two more years,
while it, the US government, and the new president of Ecuador moved to
shape the political, legal, and diplomatic ground for my arrest.
When
powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their
borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong
safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them. Without them
no individual has a hope of defending themselves against the vast
resources that a state aggressor can deploy.
If
the situation were not already bad enough in my case, the US government
asserted a dangerous new global legal position. Only US citizens have
free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free
speech rights. But the US claims its Espionage Act still applies to them
regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey US
secrecy law with no defences at all as far as the US government is
concerned. An American in Paris can talk about what the US government is
up to - perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime
without any defence and he may be extradited just like me.
Now
that one foreign government has formally asserted that Europeans have
no free speech rights, a dangerous precedent has been set. Other
powerful states will inevitably follow suit. The war in Ukraine has
already seen the criminalisation of journalists in Russia, but based on
the precedent set in my extradition, there is nothing to stop Russia, or
indeed any other state, from targeting European journalists,
publishers, or even social media users, by claiming that their secrecy
laws have been violated. The rights of journalists and publishers within
the European space are seriously threatened.
Transnational repression cannot become the norm here. As one of the world's two great norm-setting institutions, PACE must act.
The
criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to
investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted, by a
foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful
information about that power while I was in Europe.
The
fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for
doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime; it is a pillar of a free
and informed society. Mr Chairman, distinguished delegates, if Europe is
to have a future where the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish
the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to
all then it must act so that what has happened in my case never happens
to anyone else.
I
wish to express my deepest gratitude to this assembly, to the
conservatives, social democrats, liberals, leftists, greens, and
independents - who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to the
countless individuals who have advocated tirelessly for my release.
It
is heartening to know that in a world often divided by ideology and
interests, there remains a shared commitment to the protection of
essential human liberties. Freedom of expression and all that flows from
it is at a dark crossroad. I fear that unless norm setting institutions
like PACE wake up to the gravity of the situation it will be too late.
Let
us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom
never dims, that the pursuit of truth will live on, and that the voices
of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few."
