Voices from all over the world, including human rights organisations, have been condemning the treatment of Julian Assange, writes Dr John Jiggens.

IN A WATERSHED CASE for journalistic freedom, the hearing for Julian Assanges extradition to the U.S. begins in London on 24 February 2020. If extradited to the U.S., Assange will face 18 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and a potential sentence of 175 years in prison for crimes that include some of the greatest pieces of citizen journalism of the 21st century: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, Cablegate and the famous collateral murder video.

Although Assange is not a U.S. citizen, the U.S. has pressured its client states into misusing their legal systems to corral Assange for nine tortuous years, asserting its imperial right to prosecute and punish a journalist who dared to reveal its war crimes. The Espionage Act charges are all about journalism: Assanges crime is, was and has always been his courageous journalism.

While 12 people were massacred in the collateral murder video, none of the perpetrators has been prosecuted. Meanwhile, the whistle-blower and her publisher have been relentlessly hounded for a decade: Chelsea Manning attempted suicide in prison, while Assanges family have been shocked by his deterioration.

In his report on the treatment of Assange, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, declared that in 20 years of working with victims of war, violence and political persecution, he has never seen a group of democratic States (Sweden, the UK, the USA) ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.

Mr Melzer declared their systematic misuse of legal procedures was a form of legal torture and warned that Mr Assanges human rights would be seriously violated if he was extradited to the United States.

Mr Melzer stated:

My most urgent concern is that, in the United States, Mr Assange would be exposed to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, has condemned the U.S. prosecution of Assange as legal persecution and called on the Australian Government and the Australian public to ensure the gross violation of his sons human rights ceases. Mr Shipton, who returned recently from the UK, described the serious mistreatment Julian was subjected to in the UK prison system:

It is torture: 22 hours a day, being banged up by yourself, staring at the ceiling. In order to maintain his stability and health and mentality, Julian asks us how far it is between Madrid and Paris and we tell him the answer, and he sets out to walk that, walking up and down his cell, counting the steps in a journey to Paris. His cell is three metres long and he walks that in three strides.

As part of the psychological torture, Assange was intentionally kept isolated by the UK prison authorities and his contact with other prisoners was minimised. When he had visitors, the gaol hallways were deliberately cleared first, as John Shipton recounted:

When I go to meet him, they clear all the hallways and escort him with a guard on each side down these empty, black, echoing hallways into the meeting room. Above your head there are high-fidelity cameras to enable lip-reading if they want and every three metres there are general fidelity cameras.

In his cell, every 30 minutes someone opens a peephole and looks into his cell, 24 hours a day. These procedures are described by Nils Melzer as torture. Theres been nine years of torture of steadily increasing intensity. Our government knows this, they have Nils Melzers report, yet they repeat like a mantra, due process, due process.

Due process is never followed in Julians case. Never.

Mr Shiptons most recent due process concern was over reports that Julian was hot-boxed before his December court appearance. (Hot-boxing refers to keeping someone in an overheated situation and denying them water so they become dehydrated and confused.)

In his last court appearance, Julian couldnt remember his name and his birth date. His lawyers, Phillip Segal and Greg Barns, along with ten other barristers, wrote that, in their combined 50 years of legal practice defending people, they had never seen a prisoner brought before the court in such a state.

Julian Assange was always aware of the U.S.'s hidden attention to try him under the Espionage Act, says John Shipton.

He could see the Swedish allegations were part of this U.S. ruse; this is why he fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy:

For nine years, he has realised if he goes to the U.S., that is the end. He has fought for nine years not to go to the United States. He knows it means death.

Another voice concerned about Assanges treatment in the U.S. is Amnesty Internationals Deputy Director for Europe, Massimo Moratti, who warned the United Kingdom would be in breach of its obligations to protect Mr Assanges human rights should he be extradited to the United States:

The British authorities must acknowledge the real risks of serious human rights violations Julian Assange would face if sent to the USA and reject the extradition request. The UK must comply with the commitment its already made that he would not be sent anywhere he could face torture or other ill treatment.

However, the contempt for Assange's human rights by the UK, the U.S., Sweden (and Australia) are well demonstrated: in 2016, when a U.N. working party ruled that the British blockade of the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange had sought asylum amounted to arbitrary and illegal detention, both the UK and Sweden ignored the U.N. ruling. It was further demonstrated by their dismissal of the report by Nils Melzer and Massimo Moratti, who warned the United Kingdom would be in breach of its obligations to protect Mr Assanges human rights should he be extradited to the United States.

Melzer's advice to the UK in November 2019 was:

When both States realise that the way they have handled this affair is in violation of the convention on torture, they must take measures to alleviate the psychological pressures against Mr Assange. He must be given adequate means to prepare his defence. He cannot be under constant threats of extradition to the U.S. where he is not going to receive a fair trial. It is very important to start alleviating the pressure that is being put on him that is not necessary and is not in line with the rule of law.

Last week, the European Parliamentary Assembly backed the U.N. judgement about the inhuman treatment of Julian Assange and called for his immediate release.

In a report from the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media condemning the British treatment of Assange, it recommended to:

...ensure respect of, the right of journalists to protect their sources, and develop an appropriate normative, judicial and institutional framework to protect whistleblowers and whistleblowing facilitators, in line with Assembly Resolution 2300 (2019) Improving the protection of whistleblowers all over Europe; in this respect, consider that the detention and criminal prosecution of Mr Julian Assange sets a dangerous precedent for journalists, and join the recommendation of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment who declared, on 1 November 2019, that Mr Assange's extradition to the United States must be barred and that he must be promptly released.

Dr John Jiggensis a writer and journalist currently working in the community newsroom atBay-FMin Byron Bay.

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Ending the torture of Julian Assange - Independent Australia

I couldnt get to the January 25th antiwar rally. Viewing photographs of that sparsely attended rally drives home the fact that the antiwar movement is nearly dead in the US. Perhaps it is dead and I cannot bring myself to accept that fact? Only days later, bellicose Trump presenteda laughable plan for peace in the Middle East(New York Times, January 28, 2020) that endorsed the land-grabbing policy of Israel that has been a de facto reality on the ground for decades. Only a few weeks before, Trump had ordered the assassination of an Iranian general (Suleimani) and others in drone attacks.AbrahamLincoln said that assassination was international outlawry in 1863, but the lessons of history or moral compass of so-called contemporary leaders never gave that pronouncement much attention.

Following Trumps election in 2016, many left protesters and theorists advised that doing anything material (protesting, writing, working for left causes, etc.) was of the utmost importance in the face of the far-rights fascistic juggernaut. Not so! Withoutnonviolentcivil disobedience in the streets, a movement withers and remains ineffective. The failures of the peace, womens, environmental, and pro-immigrant movements are examples. Mass incarceration is yet another glaring example. Thats how fascism works. It eats up, intimidates, and marginalizes otherwise valid movements. Then it outlaws those movements. A friend from college told me that she was afraid of violence breaking out at the first womens march in 2017 and did not attend.

Antiwar activism became so diminished under Obama (How Obama demobilized the antiwar movement,Washington Post,August 29, 2013) that studies documented the retreat from the streets, even as his administration conducted a troop surge in Afghanistan, a county that has been devastated as much by the US as it has been by warlords, the Taliban, and the former Soviet Union. US support for warlords during the Soviet war there left an opening for the ongoing destruction of that country that continues today. A training ground and base for the murderous henchmen of al-Qaeda was yet another outcome of endless wars there. According to theGuardian, the USdropped a record number of bombs in Afghanistan last yearand the reaction of the remnants of the antiwar movement seems to have been a yawn.

The late antiwar demonstrator and co-founder of the Yippies, Abbie Hoffman, said that the young must be there. The young never came back to the streets in large numbers following the Vietnam War and with no skin in the game theyre not likely to return soon. Readers may cite the enormous outpouring of people on the streets during the Nuclear Freeze Movement, or the protest in the run-up to the 1990-1991 war in Iraq (first Gulf War), but neither of those movements changed the reality of war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In both movements, an older and graying cohort of demonstrators seemed to be the norm.

What is the effect of street demonstrations and rallies in 2020? I think the answer is likely nothing or close to nothing at all. I would like it to be otherwise, but the handwriting is on the wall and it has been there for sometime now. It is no longer a case of the White House feeling besieged by protest as it felt during the Vietnam era. A guess is that not one person in the White House gives a damn about street demonstrations anymore and they arent about to break into a sweat over the issue. Trump orders the assassination noted above and not many seem to care and nothing even near a critical mass arises.

Anyone, or any group, that is perceived to be a threat to the military-industrial-financial complex will be dealt with in a Draconian manner, or simply dismissed by the mass media. The case of Chelsea Manning comes to mind. She languishes in jail and the government seems to be content at having thrown away the key to her cell. Where is the outrage?

When people take direct action against the military-industrial-financial complex such as the anti-nuclear Ploughshares Movement, they are likely to be imprisoned for years. If radical environmentalists dare to do something illegal such as trashing SUVs in a dealers lot, then the same Draconian forces will come down with the wrath of God on their heads. But the political and economic systems around the world can despoil the environment with abandon and nearly nothing is done!

During the Vietnam War, there were contending forces beyond the street demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s. One movement, and I was a proud member of that group, actively resisted the war in meaningful ways such as draft and military resistance. Others, such as the Weathermen, committed and planned incredibly dangerous, illegal, and counterproductive acts such as planning an attack on a dance at a military base in the US, and killing police and a security guard during the Brinks robbery (carried out by former WeatherUndergroundmembers and others) in New York. They killed three of their own while manufacturing bombs in the West Village of New York City. One faction of the Weathermen thought a Maoist movement among youth in the US would come out of their actions. Such delusional thinking!

Sometimes attacking innocent people in war zones has long been the modus operandi of the US government, one such attack is graphically illustrated in Iraq called Collateral Murder.Drone warfare is another tactic that the government uses and almost always involves the death of innocent civilians in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. Illegitimate state-sponsored violence has generally been accepted by many people in the service of empire and profit. Noticethat the vile Trump does not face impeachmentfor acts of war outside of the rules of war, incitement to violence, or profiting from the office of president. The ruling class wouldnever allow those charges, and where are the thousands who need to be inWashington, D.C. to protest that travesty?

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To March or Not to March: Why are the Streets Nearly Empty? - CounterPunch

On this edition of the Dissenter Weekly, host and Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola highlights whistleblowers within the Democratic Party, who have exposed malfeasance in the Iowa Caucuses and alleged toxic workplace culture in the 2020 Milwaukee DNC Host Committee.

Gosztola highlights women staffers who sent a letter to the board of directors for the host committee that led to the firing of two individuals. He also shares the example of Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk County supervisor who provided a delegate count from his county yet received no explanation from Democrats as to why those were not reported. He also embarrassed state Democrats.

The state party is now being forced to walk back their error of giving Bernie Sanders delegates to Deval Patrick, who received zero votes in Black Hawk County, Schwartz wrote on Twitter.

Later in the program, Gosztola describes how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to open around a million acres of land in southwest Colorado to oil and gas drilling.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group known for its work representing environmental whistleblowers in government agencies, published records that how the regulatory agency is ignoring objections from Colorado Governor Jared Polis and the public. BLM is overruling field managers because it is line with the administrations agenda to decrease regulations as a service to the fossil fuel industry.

The episode concludes with an update on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges extradition case. Prominent Germans appealed for his release from the Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.

Gosztola will travel to London in February to cover a week-long extradition hearing for Assange. The case the United States has brought against him threatens global press freedom.

Help us fund his trip by making a donation or becoming a Shadowproof member.

Dissenter Weekly airs every Thursday at 4pm ET on YouTube and Facebook, and covers whistleblower and press freedom news from that week.

DNC Host Committee Remove Two Leaders For Creating Toxic Workplace After Whistleblowers Complain

Bureau Of Land Management Overrules Staff And Orders More Colorado Drilling

U.S. Education Department Whistleblower Forced Out After Exposing Push Against Transgender Student Athletes

FAA Whistleblower Says He Was Prevented From Inspecting Helicopter Before Hawaii Crash

US Labor Department Orders Michigan School District To Pay, Reinstate Whistleblower Who Warned Of Asbestos Hazard

Prominent Germans appeal for Julian Assanges release

***

Chelsea Manning has been in jail for 330 days. She owes $221,000 in fines.Julian Assange has been in jail for 301 days, since he was expelled from the Ecuador embassy in London.

Send tips and feedback to editor@shadowproof.com

This show is brought to you by Shadowproof.com, a 100% reader-funded press organization. If you enjoy our work, you can support us with a donation or by subscribing for $5/month or more:https://shadowproof.com/donate

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Dissenter Weekly: Whistleblowers In Iowa And The DNC Host Committee - Shadowproof

Janine Jackson interviewed Electronic Frontier Foundations Rainey Reitman about the persecution of Glenn Greenwald for the January 31, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

MP3 Link

Janine Jackson: The pathway to Brazils presidency was cleared for neofascist Jair Bolsonaro by the imprisonment of former president and popular candidate Lula da Silva, on charges of corruption that many saw from the start as spurious and politically motivated. It is then a very big deal that information given to journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed collusion between the prosecutors and the judge in the case. Since Greenwalds revelations, Lula has been released from prison, and Greenwald has been harassed and threatened, including by Bolsonaro himself. But his right to report has been upheld.

Now, though, public prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint, charging Greenwald with something called cybercrime. Here to help us see what this case might mean for journalists who challenge the powerfuland for us, the public that rely on themis Rainey Reitman, chief program officer for Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. She joins us by phone from San Francisco. Welcome to CounterSpin, Rainey Reitman.

Rainey Reitman: Thanks for having me, Janine.

JJ: I know were still learning, but free press advocates like yourself have seen enough to sound alarms about Glenn Greenwalds case, in itself and for its implications for all journalists. What is meant by cybercrime here? Is it just a different dressing for trying to prosecute reporting?

RR: Thats a really good question. Weve seen many different governments around the world push back against journalists who expose corruption in their areas. And so its not unusual to see prosecutions or to see harassment or public attacks on investigative journalists, especially ones that are very effective at exposing government corruption, the way Greenwald certainly has been.

Whats really interesting about this case is that theyre using this tool of cybercrime laws, which are laws that are meant to criminalize malicious hacking. So you could think of someone who breaks into a system to steal data for malicious intent in order to commit crimes, or for any number of other reasons. And these laws are designed to go after malicious hackers, and weve seen them be enacted around the world, and they often carry pretty stiff penalties. And so its really worrisome that this is an instance where were seeing an investigative journalist basically being charged as if he were a malicious hacker.

JJ: Well, theyre saying that Greenwald was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to hack telephones, that he didnt just accept material from his source. Now, Greenwald, as listeners will know, a founder of the Intercept and the Intercept Brasil, is a lawyer, and hes been around the block. And hes been very clear that his source that he relied on for this reporting had all the materials when he first came to him. And, in fact, Brazilian law protects that reporter/source relationship, as the supreme court in the country even said.

So it sounds as thoughhe certainly denies the idea that he was encouraging his source to hack into phones, which sounds like that would have to be proven to meet the level of cybercrime.

RR: Thats right. I think one thing thats really important to remember here is that investigative journalists, they communicate with sources quite a bit, and thats very normal. It is typical for an investigative journalist to verify the information theyre getting, and find out whats going to be in this data, why is it important, and have a bit of a back and forth. So the fact that he was communicating with this anonymous source isnt in any way problematic.

And theres nothing that weve seen in any of the chat logs that our lawyerswe have a wonderful attorney based in Brazil, who did an analysis of the criminal complaint, the original Portuguese complaintand theres nothing that we saw that was in any way indicating that Greenwald was urging the source to engage in any illegal activity, rather that this was more about confirming that he had received the documents that he needed in order to do the reporting on it, and verifying some of that.

I think that theres some questions about whats going to play out here, right. I mean, one of the things at the crux of this case is that the original leaks were about judicial misconduct. And so its worrisome to see an investigative reporter being brought through the same court systems that he exposed as having misconduct in them.

JJ: Or as the New York Times says, raised questions and cast doubt, which I thought was a bit gentle. Well, James Risen had an op-ed in the New York Times saying that Greenwalds case, and that of Julian Assangealso charged with aiding his source, Chelsea Manning, to access a military databasethat theyre based in part on a new prosecutorial concept: that journalism can be proven to be a crime through a focus on interactions between reporters and their sources; he called it a detour around the First Amendment.

And what I thought was also interesting, was Risen says governments like Bonsonaros and Donald Trumps seem to have decided to experiment with such draconian antipress tactics by trying them out first on aggressive and disagreeable figures.

And here to me is where the public can come in. Its worrisome if we start thinking, Well, I dont really like Julian Assange, or Greenwald has an axe to grind,; we have to keep a clear eye on the principles here.

RR: I think thats completely right. If we get down to it, these are relatively new tactics being employed to silence journalists who are confronting existing power structures. And a free society, when its functioning well, can tolerate investigative journalists, even those who are, as Risen says, disagreeable.

And, in fact, I think a free society thrives when it gets articles about corruption and misconduct, and theres a sense that if something is wrong, theres a way for there to be sort of a safety valve: Sources can go to the media, present true facts, and the public will find out. The idea that theres this big backlash, using this relatively untested tool to silence journalists, is pretty concerning, and its something that I think were all waiting to see how it plays out, because, of course, Julian Assange, that case is not over yet. This case against Greenwald is not over yet. And so it will really be such a big deal if we see that laws designed for malicious hacking can basically be used to shutter journalists.

JJ: Part of whats happened is a scramble around, if people are not willing to come to the defense of an Assange or an Ed Snowden or Glenn Greenwald, then we think, Oh, because theyre not really real reporters, or theyre not really real journalists. And theres a kind of essentialism that we seek. But as youre saying, this is information that the public has a right to know, and journalists have won prizes for it. So I guess Id like to see media themselves coming out stronger in defense of journalism, and particular journalists, particularly when theyre under fire like this.

Rainey Reitman: We need to ensure that as the news evolves, our thinking about what is protected by the First Amendment, and by free speech laws internationally, also evolves.

RR: And theres no question that Glenn Greenwald is the epitome of a journalist. I mean, hes a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He has been at this for a very long time, and is himself a constitutional lawyer. So, for me, the Greenwald case is especially egregious, because there should be absolutely no question. And, in fact, the Brazilian supreme court, prior to this, had even upheld and preemptively stated that his relationship with the source was protected under Brazilian constitutional law.

I understand that there are people who want to distance themselves from Julian Assange, who arent happy with Edward Snowden, and the thing I keep coming back to is, this is about more than the people involved; its about the principles, and its about what kind of society we want to live in.

And journalism has become digital, right? We are living in a society that most of us are getting our news online or through various online media. And so we need to ensure that as the news evolves, our thinking about what is protected by the First Amendment, and by free speech laws internationally, also evolves.

JJ: Let me just ask you, finally: I know that EFF did a report a few years back. Let me just bring you back to cybercrime for a second. What did you have to say about how cybercrime laws could be shaped to comport with human rights, so that maybe they couldnt be this tool in prosecutors hands?

RR: Yeah, thank you for asking about that. The Electronic Frontier Foundation put out a detailed report where we compared cybercrime laws across the Americas, throughout North and South America, and how they were being used. At the time, we were particularly interested in cases where security researchers academics and others who are engaged in security research to help harden our systems and make the public more secure were facing prosecution or legal jeopardy as a result of cybercrime laws. And we found that in our analysis, many of the laws across the Americas around computer intrusion are extremely hazy and vague, using vague terms that dont adequately or clearly describe the activities theyre trying to punish, and also could carry pretty hefty penalties.

Protecting Security Researchers Rights in the Americas (EFF, 10/16/18)

And we see that even in the United States, where the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has very steep penalties, and can be applied with a lot of prosecutorial discretion. So given that, we made a number of recommendations; a couple of them, to hone in on it, were around ensuring that malicious intent was baked in, so that it would be clear that this law is designed just to go after, not those who are acting in the public interest to uncover security vulnerabilities, but, rather, actually people who are trying to illegally get data, or do other malicious things through computer intrusion.

And we also talked about ensuring that the penalties were basically similar to the crimes that were being committed. One of the concerns is that if somebody is engaged in an act that is illegal, if theyre doing it with a computer, that doesnt mean that they should get 10 times as much time in prison as if they had done it not using a computer. And we need to make sure that just adding through a computer doesnt wildly change the penalties associated with a crime.

I will say that the report we did was analyzing the use of these cybercrime laws especially around security researchers. And, again, now that we can see that these laws can be turned against journalists, that is a really worrisome trend, and especially dangerous considering how vague these laws are, and what powerful penalties theyre often associated with.

JJ: Weve been speaking with Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You can find their work online at EFF.org. Rainey Reitman, thank you so much for joining us today on CounterSpin.

RR: Thank you so much for having me.

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'These Are New Tactics Being Employed to Silence Journalism' - FAIR