As supporters of Julian Assange held a news conference Friday at the United Kingdom’s consulate in New York to demand freedom for the jailed WikiLeaks founder, a trio of leading leftist figures decried the British government’s approval of the ailing Australian’s extradition to the United States.
In a statement published ahead of Friday’s press conference, the three chairs of the Assange Defense Committee — linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker — blasted U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel’s greenlighting of Assange’s transfer to the U.S. earlier in the day. Assange plans to appeal the decision.
“It’s a sad day for Western democracy. The U.K.’s decision to extradite Julian Assange to the nation that plotted to assassinate him — the nation that wants to imprison him for 175 years for publishing truthful information in the public interest — is an abomination,” the trio said, referring to an alleged 2017 CIA scheme to kidnap or kill the WikiLeaks founder.
“We expect the world’s most despised autocrats to persecute journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers. We expect totalitarian regimes to gaslight their people and crack down on those who challenge the government,” they continued. “Shouldn’t we expect Western democracies to behave better?”
🚨 BREAKING🚨
Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Alice Walker React to the Assange Extradition Sign Off:“It is a sad day for western democracy.”https://t.co/oxhiKJjPsA pic.twitter.com/ZKNPCG6BBO
— Assange Defense (@DefenseAssange) June 17, 2022
The statement continued:
The U.S. government argues that its venerated Constitution does not protect journalism the government dislikes, and that publishing truthful information in the public interest is a subversive, criminal act.
This argument is a threat not only to journalism, but to democracy itself. The U.K. has shown its complicity in this farce, by agreeing to extradite a foreigner based on politically motivated charges that collapse under the slightest scrutiny.
Speakers at Friday’s event in New York included Assange’s father and progressive German parliamentarian Sevim Dağdelen, who said that “today is a dark day for press freedom, a dark day for human rights.”
LIVE NOW: The family of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a press conference after Assange’s extradition to the U.S. was approved Friday by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel https://t.co/DIMfb7dxk9
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 17, 2022
“Julian Assange is a hero,” she added. “Every decent citizen and journalist is called to stand up.”
Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support.
Truthout is widely read among people with lower incomes and among young people who are mired in debt. Our site is read at public libraries, among people without internet access of their own. People print out our articles and send them to family members in prison — we receive letters from behind bars regularly thanking us for our coverage. Our stories are emailed and shared around communities, sparking grassroots mobilization.
We’re committed to keeping all Truthout articles free and available to the public. But in order to do that, we need those who can afford to contribute to our work to do so.
We’ll never require you to give, but we can ask you from the bottom of our hearts: Will you donate what you can, so we can continue providing journalism in the service of justice and truth?