The campaign to free Julian Assange has urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to boost its efforts to negotiate the WikiLeaks founder’s release when the government meets US and UK leaders next month to discuss the AUKUS deal.
The calls come in response to remarks made by Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong at the National Press Club on Monday, after she was asked whether international concern over the detainment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia on espionage charges would prompt the Australian government to do more to secure Assange’s release from the UK.
Greg Barns SC, an adviser to the Assange campaign, said the Australian government can’t condemn Russia for detaining Gershkovich while refusing to take the “strongest diplomatic actions” to pressure US and UK leaders to release Assange.
“Our concern is that this is a case that’s more than simply about an Australian that’s incarcerated in a UK prison, in very difficult conditions. This is a case that strikes at the heart of democracy and freedom of speech,” Barns told Crikey.
Barns said the government’s AUKUS agreement has offered two opportunities to negotiate Assange’s release. First, when Albanese met UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in March, and then during talks between Albanese, Sunak and US President Joe Biden in May, when the three are expected to discuss AUKUS.
The government faces renewed pressure to advance its efforts to free Assange as US authorities dig in their heels to secure the release of Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained in Russia on spying charges since the Cold War.
Gershkovich was taken by Russian authorities in the city of Yekaterinburg, which sits roughly 1800 kilometres east of Moscow, on March 29, and has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison where he awaits trial, set to begin on May 29, and which could deliver a 20-year sentence.
He was visited by US consular officials for the first time since his arrest on Monday, and has drawn support from politicians across the US, including Biden, who called the reporter’s imprisonment “out of bounds” and “totally illegal”.
Assange, by contrast, has been detained in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison since April 2019, where his health is reported to have deteriorated. He was visited for the first time by an Australian high commissioner earlier this month.
The WikiLeaks co-founder is fighting US attempts to extradite him to face charges related to the publication in 2010 and onwards of hundreds of thousands of leaked defence documents detailing military conduct in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Newly appointed high commissioner Stephen Smith’s visit to Belmarsh was dubbed a “significant” development by the Assange campaign, which Barns said indicated the Albanese government was taking the situation seriously.
Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton told Crikey it was the right move by Wong to engage the high commissioner: “The minister is right to engage the commissioner on this issue. Julian should be at home with his family, not rotting in a British dungeon.
“Four years in a maximum security prison for publishing truthful information isn’t a legal proceeding. It’s a political persecution.”
On Monday, Wong was reserved when pressed about what progress the government had made, other than that she has charged Smith with engaging British authorities on the conditions faced by Assange at Belmarsh, a “category A” detention facility in London’s south-east.
“We think Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long. We think that it should be brought to a close. That’s our public position, and that reflects what we have communicated at leader level and at my level and at other levels throughout our engagement,” Wong said on Monday.
“[But] there are obviously limits to what you can do in terms of another country’s legal proceedings, and we’re not a party to those proceedings. We can’t intervene in those proceedings, just as the UK and the US can’t intervene in our legal proceedings.”
‘We think Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long. We think that it should be brought to a close’.
This is Wong’s standard reply to all questions related to Assange’s incarceration. Like everything else she opines on, the words are there but they mean absolutely nothing – mustn’t antagonise the Atlanticists.
As Keating so precisely stated after Wong’s speech in Canberra yesterday:
’I never expected more than platitudes from Penny Wong’s press club speech and as it turned out, I was not disappointed’.
Even John Howard managed to have David Hicks & Mamdouh Habib safely extradited from Guantanamo Bay back home. This was after he had pronounced Hicks ‘one of the world’s most dangerous terr0rists’.
Surely Albanese, having signed the one-sided AUKUS deal, is owed a favour & can prevail on Joe Biden to conclude this sorry case. If not then what is the point of being an ally of the US…
Doesn’t quite work that way about the Favor and Assange is a special case due to the massive amount of Espionage committed with no regard for the consequences that came out of it.
The consequences being… that people found out what the US was up to?
Assange committed no espionage, he merely published. Daniel Ellsberg & Neil Sheehan (journo, The NYT) never served gaol time for exposing The Pentagon Papers. Nor did any editors of The NYT or The Guardian who were complicit in publishing in tandem with Assange.
Yes, it appears Assange is an extraordinarily ‘special case’.
Informing the voters what their ‘democratic’ governments have been up to in secret is not ‘espionage’.
By the accounts of US evidence there were no significant consequences from Chelsea Manning’s release of war crimes data, thank goodness. But that lie that lives were put at risk continues to be peddled by US apologists and torturers. Capitalise Espionage and “Favour” by all means but stick to a consistent line of facts, please.
There was also:
– the 2014 Peter Greste case, convicted by an Egyptian court to seven years jail for espionage. He was freed the following year after intensive interventions by the Aust. govt.
– Kylie Gilbert-Moore was imprisoned in Iran also on espionage charges. In 2020, a prisoner exchange initiative met with success after the Australian govt. conducted a complex global operation for her release.
-In 2018, James Ricketson was convicted of espionage in Cambodia and copped a six year prison sentence. Less than a month later, he was pardoned after an Aust. govt. campaigned strongly against the frame-up.
-In 2021 Sean Turnell, an Aust. economist and adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, was charged and convicted of espionage in Myanmar. When Turnell was sentenced to three years imprisonment, Wong defiantly stated – ‘Australia rejects the ruling in Myanmar against Prof. Turnell. We do not accept the charges against him’. Through an aggressive campaign, Wong and the government secured Turnell’s release last November.
Wong’s claim that Australia cannot, and will not, intervene in the ‘legal processes’ of another country is not only a blatantly false claim, it is also an insult to Australians, particularly those actively campaigning for Assange’s release.
Thanks for reminding us of these cases. The evidence is that when the US is involved we bow & kiss the ring.
Bringing the matter to a close is not the same as freeing him. I have very little confidence they are doing what they can to actually bring him home.
Every Australian journalist still at liberty should be asking this question of government officials every day! And how Australia can make an alliance with a foreign country which inappropriately jails Australian needs to be explained.
Yesh, Wong. Again trying to have it both ways. She did the same with same sex marriage legislation in 2010 when she abrogated her ministerial responsibility to take legislation before parliament, noting that it just didn’t have the support in her own party yet. With this sort of principled person as our Foreign Minister, Assange can look forward to a release date sometime on the 12th of Never!