How strange it was to see some of the world’s most powerful institutions lined up against one single person;even more so when that person happens to be your friend.
Julian Assange pictured in 2010 before his ordeal with the US justice system began in earnest.nna\advidler
I’ve known Julian Assange for three decades. For nearly half that time,he has been denied his freedom. The idea that he will finally be able to come home to Australia,to spend time with his wife and two young children,is almost overwhelming,it is so full of joy.
Julian and I met in a BBS,an early community internet hub,in 1994. He’s highly gifted intellectually,self-taught,a deep thinker and motivated by wanting to solve the ills of the world. At that time,it was a lot of hanging out in warehouses listening to techno and geeking out with other people from those hubs. But he did real-life things too:he was a part of the community campaign to save the Fitzroy Pool from closure.
I remember once in those early days he said to me:“What can someone who is bright,who has some great technical skills but not a lot of money,do to fix the big problems in the world?” That was how he came up with the idea for WikiLeaks.
Over the years,we began to work together. He had the tech skills and I had the writing skills,so it just made sense. We worked on a number of projects,including our book together.
Julian Assange sits with lawyer Gareth Peirce before boarding a flight at London Stansted Airport on his way to a court appearance in the Northern Mariana Islands,a US commonwealth in the Pacific.@wikileaks/Twitter
I found out about his arrest when I was in the back of a taxi cab in London. Obviously,I was worried about the worst-case scenario,but I didn’t realise it would be such a long and hard journey. Things were very bleak that day,but I didn’t know just how much bleaker they would get.
As someone who has long campaigned for his release,I feel delight and relief,and maybe even hope we have found a turning point for free speech,whistleblowing,investigative journalism and the creative use of technology to support all three.
This is the biggest press freedom case of this generation. Yet those who tout themselves as the biggest proponents of press freedom – notably the US government – were behind the assault on Julian’s freedom.
Matt Golding
The campaign to save Julian,running over a decade and a half,has included of grassroots campaigners,as well as a plurality across the media,civil society and politicians of all persuasions from Australia,the US,Europe and Latin America.
Despite the darkness of his experience,there are many great successes here – most of all in the way that people across the world for the freedom of an Australian publisher and journalist. Grassroots activism really matters – people worked worldwide for Julian’s freedom on different levels of influence,with some acting in public and others behind the scenes. The activism came from groups of doctors,lawyers,politicians,philanthropists,artists,organisers – people contributed what they could,and did so generously.
People signed petitions,organised town hall events,held public debates,made films,created art,projected banners on public buildings,designed billboards (and drove them around the country on trucks),wrote books,reported on his case,gave legal and safety advice,built computer software,painted astonishing street art – the list goes on. This was a victory for hundreds of millions made by tens of thousands. In more than 25 years of civil society work,I’ve never seen anything like it.
Also extraordinary has been the parliamentarians from opposing ends of the political spectrum who have gone,hand in hand,to Washington,DC to fight Julian’s corner. That includes sincere efforts by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,as well as many crossbenchers and members of the major parties. It’s not often that such a broad range of politicians work together for one goal.
The take-home message is inspiring:being active in the causes that matter can right a wrong. It’s a message Julian has long subscribed to.
Julian has become an enormous symbol of oppressed journalism;many institutions let him down along the way,as did some journalists,who should have known better. Their sniping and lazy re-circulation of lies is now a matter of public record for the world to judge. It may have taken more than a decade,but as Julian used to say when editing WikiLeaks,“truth will out”.
Julian has revolutionised journalism,using technology to force change. He has created or mainstreamed so many changes that are now regular practice:the anonymous,encrypted dropbox to protect whistleblowers going to the media,the move towards collaborative publishing where investigative journalists from dozens of media outlets work together on analysing a large dataset,and the publication of original source documents to verify what the journalist has written is true.
Perhaps of equal importance,Julian has led the charge to mainstream whistleblowing. Once universally despised as dibber-dobbers and rats,they now have a place in our society,and in our laws,particularly in fighting corruption.
There’s still a way to go;Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus (no relation),now is the moment to stop punishing ATO whistleblower and Defence whistleblower. Also,there’s embarrassingly little that’s been actioned from the courageous into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Biden White House has been smart to settle the US government’s case against Julian. You can’t go around the world claiming to be the greatest champion of free speech when you’re simultaneously trying to lock up a publisher and journalist for doing their job. What Julian published on WikiLeaks might have been embarrassing to governments,but there is no dispute as to its accuracy.
The US has held on to a single face-saving charge,which Julian will plead to in the Northern Mariana Islands this week. It’s a novel outcome – a US district court on a tropical island is to host a guilty plea from an Australian digital publisher for things he did in the name of investigative journalism and free speech some 15 years earlier.
In running WikiLeaks,Julian did what all journalists and editors:he called power to account by reporting factually correct information to the public. That’s how an open democracy with a free media works.
Viva Julian. Viva WikiLeaks.
Dr Suelette Dreyfus is the co-author with Julian Assange of the 1997 bookUnderground,and an academic and senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.
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