The human chain protest
voices the growing call to free Assange
By John Rees
October 07, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- AN UNPRECEDENTED show
of support for Julian Assange is due this
Saturday when protesters form a human chain that
will surround Parliament. Parliament has never
been surrounded in this way before and
organisers intend the demonstration to send an
unmistakable message to MPs and to the world’s
press that Assange should be set free.
The initiative has sparked a global day of
solidarity with protests also taking place from
America to Australia.
The UK protest will form in front of the
Palace of Westminster and stretch over
Westminster Bridge, along the south bank of the
Thames, and back over Lambeth Bridge.
The event comes at a vital moment in Julian
Assange’s legal battle against extradition to
the US where he could face 175 years in jail for
publishing the truth about the Afghan and Iraq
wars.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the
extradition request from the US government
earlier this year. But Assange’s lawyers have
launched an appeal against that decision with
the High Court. They are now awaiting the
court’s decision on whether or not it will hear
the appeal.
That’s why the protest comes at a vital
moment. It’s essential that the court both
agrees to hear the appeal and that it decides to
overturn the extradition request.
There is still time to overturn the
extradition and there is still road to run in
the British courts. But the initial court
hearings in the Magistrates Court and the appeal
courts have been exhausted so it is hugely
important that the political pressure on the
government and the courts is redoubled at this
moment.
There could not be more at stake in a single
court case than there is in the Assange case.
The right of journalists to report the facts
that governments and corporations don’t wish to
have revealed will be virtually criminalised if
the prosecution of Assange is successful.
The authoritarian instincts of the new Tory
Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, are, almost
unbelievably, more extreme than those of her
predecessor, Priti Patel.
The continued persecution of Assange, now in
his fourth year in Belmarsh prison, is part of a
wider attack on civil liberties by the Tories.
The government plans greater powers for the
police to curb political protest, a raft of
anti-union legislation which will make it
virtually impossible to organise a legal and
effective strike, a new official secrets act,
and new limitations on freedom of speech.
Success for the Tories in extraditing Julian
Assange will embolden them in every other attack
they are making on civil liberties and trade
union rights. That’s why its in the interest of
every trade unionist, everyone who cares about
preserving civil liberties, to join the human
chain protest this Saturday.
The National Union of Journalists, and the
International Federation of Journalists which
represents 300,000 members worldwide, are
supporting the protests. So is Amnesty
International. Kevin Courtney, the joint general
secretary of the teachers’ union, the NEU, has
added his voice to the call. And he’s been
joined by film directors Ken Loach and Oliver
Stone, musicians Brian Eno, Lowkey, and Roger
Waters, MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Burgon,
and the president of the Muslim Association of
Britain, Raghad Al Tikriti.
There is now a growing consensus that the
Assange extradition is a wholly unjustified
assault on freedom of the press. Moreover, the
revelations during the extradition hearings
themselves have raised the gravest doubts about
the legality of the process itself.
In the course of the court hearings it has
become public knowledge that a lead witness for
the prosecution lied, that Assange and his
lawyers were spied on by the CIA, and that the
CIA discussed at the highest levels plans to
abduct or assassinate Assange.
In any normal trial any one of these, let
alone all of them, would have had the case
dismissed.
That has not happened in the Assange case
because there is too much at stake in the
“special relationship” between the US and
British governments. It is this above all else
that marks the Assange case out as a political
trial.
In a political trial it is crucial that
political pressure outside the courtroom is
brought to bear to halt the abuse of the legal
system that takes place in the courtroom.
That’s why the surround Parliament protest
this Saturday is so important and it is why that
protest must become the springboard for renewed
and intensified campaigns to free Assange this
autumn.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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