Courage announces publishing organisation WikiLeaks as its newest beneficiary. The announcement follows reports that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is now preparing charges against WikiLeaks members, in particular its founding editor Julian Assange.
The DOJ has been running an unprecedented and wide-ranging investigation into WikiLeaks for its publishing and sourcing work since 2010. It has involved paid informers, illegal interrogations in Europe and secret search warrants. Recently CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service”.
Offences cited through the investigation, and allegedly in the charges, include conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property. Recent reports cite Cablegate, the Iraq and Afghan War Logs and Vault 7 publications as well as WikiLeaks’ work in getting NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum, as key to the investigation.
This is about more than one publisher. It is about press freedom more broadly and the steady erosion of the First Amendment in the United States. The Obama Administration prosecuted more whistleblowers than all presidents before combined, and ran the longest investigation into a publisher ever in the US with its WikiLeaks Grand Jury. It has continued to the point where Trump’s Department of Justice has stated that charging WikiLeaks Editor, Julian Assange, is now a “priority”.
Courage’s chief demand is for the US to close the Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks and to drop any charges against any WikiLeaks staff. Courage’s campaign for WikiLeaks is launched on a new site, IamWikiLeaks.org, along with information on the continuing work of WikiLeaks and the actions taken against it. You can follow @CourageWL on Twitter for updates. Courage needs your help to fund WikiLeaks’ team of lawyers in multiple jurisdictions: https://iamwikileaks.org/donate
This is the first time Courage has taken on an organisation, as opposed to an individual, as a beneficiary. We are working to ensure the protection of all WikiLeaks staff, including Julian Assange, Joseph Farrell, Sarah Harrison and Kristinn Hrafnsson.
Because she is now a beneficiary, Sarah Harrison will be stepping down from her role as Acting Director of Courage and the Trustees will take on high-level managing decisions.
Julian Assange continues to be arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has asylum due to the US threats against him.
Courage Trustee and journalist John Pilger said:
In standing up for WikiLeaks, we are defending courage — the courage of those who say ‘no’ to the perennial bullies seeking a divine power over human affairs. Founded and led by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks has provided people all over the world with an armory of truth about wars and politics and the aims of violent, unaccountable power. This is real journalism and a principle of freedom so fundamental that its defeat would mean the conquest of all of us.
Fellow Trustee and human rights lawyer Renata Avila said:
What we are defending here is larger than Wikileaks: we are defending the ability of journalists and citizens, regardless of their nationality, to hold accountable the most powerful government in the World by exposing its secrets, uncovering wrongdoing, and keeping us all informed. The fight for press freedom is more urgent than ever. Will your voice be silenced? Or will you join us to tell them, THIS ENDS NOW.
WikiLeaks members have several lawyers in many different countries and jurisdictions, and Courage needs your help to fund them: https://iamwikileaks.org/donate
Dame Vivienne Westwood is a world-renowned British fashion designer and political activist, who co-created punk in the 70s and elevated street style to the level of high fashion. A highly influential cultural figure for five decades, Vivienne Westwood has used her platform to campaign on political issues, bringing much needed attention to campaigns for civil liberties, human rights and climate change. In 2013, during Chelsea Manning’s trial, Dame Vivienne dedicated one of her collections to the WikiLeaks whistleblower and wore a badge with Manning’s image and the word TRUTH to the Met Ball. She was awarded an OBE in 1992.
A journalist since the 1960s, Australian-born John Pilger is renowned as a foreign and war correspondent in the UK, as well as a documentary filmmaker. He has won an Emmy and BAFTA Academy Awards for epic films covering Cambodia, East Timor, Palestine and Latin America. In December 2010, Pilger pledged and organised bail support to Julian Assange and featured him in his film, “The War You Don’t See.” In 2009, he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, for “courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard,” and for “commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form.” He lives in London.
Renata Avila is a human rights lawyer specialising in Intellectual Property and Technology. She worked as one of the lawyers representing the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and more recently, Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Involved in Internet and Human Rights research since 2006, Renata worked with the Web Inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and more than 125 organizations from the global south, in an effort to uphold human rights in the digital age. She serves as a Board Member of Creative Commons and is an active advisory member for the the Municipality of Barcelona’s BITS initiative, aiming at reducing surveillance and empowering citizens with privacy tools. She is currently writing a book on Digital Colonialism.
After being a textile designer in Scotland, a publisher in London and New York and a photographer on assignments around the world, Susan Benn founded Performing Arts Labs (PAL Labs), to bring together leading international talents across the arts, sciences, education and cultural policy. At PAL Labs participants brought radical ideas to develop challenging new work together. Benn is currently Senior Advisor to the Centre for Investigative Journalism at Goldsmiths University, a Director of The Mind Reels Company, Founder and International Advisor for the Southasian Children’s Cinema Forum and Chairman of StrongBack, London’s new Caribbean theatre company.