interview – Courage Foundation

Courage Foundation Acting Director and WikiLeaks Investigations Editor Sarah Harrison sat down with Democracy Now! to talk about her four months with Edward Snowden after escorting him from Hong Kong to Moscow, why she can’t return to the UK, and why we need the Courage Foundation.

Harrison explained why she would go to such lengths to help Snowden:

A few reasons. One’s sort of a general ethical point that someone had done something so brave, and they should be supported, and I felt an empathy, a natural human empathy, and wished to support. Then there’s also the fact that, I mean, I work for a publishing organization. We obviously rely a lot on sources and believe in source protection. And the last example that the world had of how the U.S. government treats a high-value source is Chelsea Manning, who they put into a cage, was tortured, sentenced to prison for 35 years in the end. And I think it’s important for the world that you can speak the truth, you can blow the whistle, and you don’t have to end up in a cage; there are people that will support you, that there are people that will take risks for you, when you have risked so much, and you can have asylum in a country.

Asked about the importance of the Courage Foundation, she said:

[It’s] for Edward Snowden’s defense and also for future Snowdens. We want to show that there is an organization that will do what we did for Snowden and as much as possible in raising money for legal defense, public advocacy for whistleblowers, so that they know when they—if they come forward, there is a support group there for them.

When asked what future Snowdens should do, Harrison advised:

I think that it is important for them to understand that there are people that will support them. I think they should reach out to organizations like the Courage Foundation that can help them—ideally pre-emptively. It would be better if we didn’t have to save someone with their face all over the front pages of every newspaper in the world. And I think that—I think it’s important that they understand that there is a public desire for the truth and that they will hopefully be seen as heroes.

See the full segment and full transcript of the interview here.

Wolfgang Kaleck, Edward Snowden’s German lawyer and the founder and general secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, spoke to Democracy Now! on Monday.

Kaleck discussed Snowden’s prospects of returning to the United States:

It’s not only about the charges. Yeah, there are charges under the Espionage Act, a very doubtful law which deserves to be reformed very quick. But it’s the treatment, the special treatment, what whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning got in the recent year in the U.S., and that’s special administrative measures in—during the prison time. It’s incommunicado time. It’s inhumane treatment, what he might face, but especially it’s a very long and not appropriate prison sentence he might get. And so, I fully understand, we all fully understand—the German public, the European public fully understands—that he doesn’t return under these conditions.

He talked about the German government canceling its contract with Verizon:

…the significance of this is that there were some members of the Parliament who raised their concern that when Verizon is organizing the internal communication within the German Parliament on one hand, and on the other hand they are known for their cooperation with U.S. secret services, there is a danger that internal communication within the German Parliament will be kind of wiretapped by U.S. secret services. You know, no matter if this concern is right or not, but, I mean, this is a strong signal to all U.S. corporations, telephone corporations and Internet corporations, to do something about this problem, because they are going to lose more contracts than this if they are not willing to establish firewalls between, you know, their clients and the secret services.

Kaleck commented on what he thought was Snowden’s most important revelation:

I think it’s not one document. It’s the series of documents released all over the last 12 months. There is no way out. There is no excuse possible. All what we were suspecting over the last decade, many people were criticizing, but without real evidence, and now this evidence is out. And so, nobody can deny that this practice of mass surveillance, not only of so-called terrorists, not only of so-called dangerous people, but massive surveillance against many of us is taking place. And I think that’s the biggest—the biggest revelation, the most important.

Watch the full broadcast and read a full transcript here.