JULIAN Assange's father John Shipton is urging people to contact their federal MPs to gain further parliamentary support for his imprisoned son, as the United States' government continues its efforts to extradite him from England to face charges his supporters say would amount to "a death sentence".
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Mr Shipton and supporters Jacob Grech and Ian Rose were joined by speakers including Newcastle Greens councillor John Mackenzie at Wheeler Place yesterday afternoon, before the travelling trio spoke at a function at Hunter Workers last night.
Mr Grech told last night's gathering that the UK courts were due to rule on June 7 whether a US appeal against the UK's refusal to grant extradition would be heard.
"But there's been so much delay and shenanigans that nothing's certain," Mr Grech said.
Mr Shipton said the Assange team had been unable to secure a meeting with US President Joe Biden but he was returning to America next month to try again.
Mr Shipton said the West's critics including China had started deflecting criticism of their human rights records by saying that Assange had been without freedom since 2012 - first after seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, and then in prison in Belmarsh Prison since April 2019 - despite "committing no crimes under English or Australian law".
THE TRIALS OF JULIAN ASSANGE:
In an emotional summary of his son's experiences and the impact of the Wikileaks movement he co-founded, Mr Shipton evoked Percy Shelley's 1820 play Prometheus Unbound, saying that "knowledge brings freedom".
He said Assange and those with him, including Chelsea Manning, had opened the world's eyes to the "manipulation, suborning and corruption of government": victims had been helped by Wikileaks publications including the US material at the heart of the extradition attempt.
He said "the strength of Australia" was in the response of its politicians to the electorate they represent. He urged people to ask their MPs to join a cross-party parliamentary group that now had 26 members and was growing.
He was confident they would be able to "bring Julian home" but a bigger show of popular support would help make it happen more quickly.
Mr Grech said the Home Run For Julian campaign had been on the road for months, travelling throughout Victoria, NSW and Queensland, in small towns as well as cities, to "drum up support" for Assange.
The final stop on this leg of the campaign is in Canberra on Thursday (May 14).
He and Mr Shipton said there had been a steady increase in support from governments and government agencies in various countries against the US determination to charge Assange with 18 charges that together would bring him 175 years in prison if convicted.
Wikileaks began in 2006 and it has since emerged that the US began a criminal investigation of the organisation and Assange in 2010 after it published a series of leaks of classified US material later found to have been provided by US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (known at the time as Bradley Manning).
Sweden issued an international warrant for his arrest in 2010 on allegations of sexual assault, which were dropped in 2019 and which Assange said from the start was a pretext to have him extradited to the US if he went to Sweden to face the court.
He was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012, and he continued to work from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, as Wikileaks continued to publish material including files on Syria and secret Saudi Arabian documents.
Publication of Hillary Clinton's emails in the 2016 election created further controversy and although the US accused Wikileaks of collusion with Russia. The Democratic National Committee sued Wikileaks in 2018 but the case failed and the judge found Wikileaks had done nothing wrong in publishing the material regardless of how it was obtained.
A large "drop" of CIA documents in 2017 - known as "Vault 7" - further angered the US government, while at the same time Assange and Wikileaks continued to collect plaudits and awards for their efforts in furthering the cause of journalism and human rights.
THE WIKILEAKS FILE:
Others, however, saw - and still see - Assange as either a tool for - or a dupe of - forces hostile to the West, including Russia.
The Ecuadorian government withdrew its asylum in April 2019 and English police arrested Assange on April 11 on the basis of the US extradition warrant.
He was charged with breaching the bail conditions of his 2012 arrest in relation to the Swedish allegations and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. But with the US still wanting him extradited at the end of that sentence, he was kept in Belmarsh as a "flight risk", although the same judge then denied the extradition request in January this year, citing concerns about his mental health and his potential to take his own life.
At the same time, it is well documented - and Mr Shipton attested yesterday - that Assange's physical health has also deteriorated.
Mr Shipton said that his son had lost 15 kilograms in weight, had aged prematurely and was confused and disorientated.
As a father, it was very difficult to watch what was happening, but he was also proud of what he said his son had achieved.
Mr Grech said yesterday that Wikileaks had revolutionised journalism.
"Every big mainstream news outlet has secure dropbox facilities to allow whistleblowers to provide information, so in that sense Wikileaks has been mainstreamed," Mr Grech said.
He said that a number of major news outlets had published the same material as Wikileaks and had not been pursued by the US.
A leaflet handed out yesterday summarised the situation as "politically motivated charges [that] represent an unprecedented attack on press freedom and the public's right to know - seeking to criminalise basic journalistic activity".
Mr Shipton said he preferred to look at "policies" rather than individuals and while only 26 of 229 federal MPs had joined the cross-party support group, he said the 26 who had still represented 'a considerable number" and he was confident the group would increase.
He urged anyone interested to look online at the Assange Freedom Network - www.assangefreedom.network - and at similar sites including dontextraditeassange.com.
A series of essays by prominent journalists, academics and commentators including Quentin Dempster, Julian Burnside, George Gittoes, Suelette Dreyfus and Phillip Adams, titled A Secret Australia: Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposes, was published recently by Monash University Publishing.
In its foreword, Phillip Adams describes it as an "odd . . . paradox" that Australia should give birth to the two most powerful media figures in the world - Rupert Murdoch and Julian Assange.
"For me, Julian is, without qualification, a hero, a national treasure," Adams writes. "Australia is the better for all his work."
But as John Shipton said last night, it is work that has taken a terrible toll on his son.
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