Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, but one would barely know it with the sort of care the Australian Government has shown, say observers.
Media specialist Dr Anthony Ashbolt says Mr Assange has been treated “appallingly” by the Australian Government.
“One would have thought that the Australian Government might have made some intervention on behalf of Julian Assange, given that his life has been threatened and he still holds an Australian passport,” he told The Epoch Times.
Julian Assange, 39, admitted he had feared for his life after his award-winning website released explosive documents pertaining to US military behaviour in Iraq and Afghanistan earlier this year.
His London-based lawyer, Mark Stephens, says those fears have increased after the recent leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables. A warrant for Mr Assange’s arrest, which Mr Stephens says is a political stunt, has also been issued relating to sex crimes allegedly committed while he was in Sweden in August. Interpol has followed up with a global arrest warrant.
Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland had earlier suggested that Mr Assange would be stripped of his Australian passport following the recent leaks, but has since softened his tone saying that he is “entitled” to return, offering consular assistant should he be arrested.
However, Mr McClelland has made it clear that he does not approve of Mr Assange’s actions and will support the United States in their quest to have Mr Assange behind bars.
“United States law enforcement authorities are looking very, very closely at the fact that United States laws may have been breached. I’ve stated that Australian Federal police are looking at the issue as to whether any Australian laws might have been breached,” he told the ABC.
Dr Ashbolt, a lecturer in US politics and the media at Wollongong University, says he does not believe Mr Assange has broken any US laws.
“The first amendment makes it quite clear that it would be difficult to prosecute him in America under American law.”
He made the point that it is not Mr Assange who is leaking documents from the US Government.
“He is just a conduit for the information”, he said, noting that the actual hacking had been done by a US soldier who had already been arrested.
Stephen Keim, president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, says that by accusing Julian Assange of criminal conduct, Robert McClelland was undermining freedom of speech in Australia.
“Although the attorney-general is entitled to disagree with – even protest – the actions taken, it is a particularly objectionable misuse of political hyperbole in these circumstances to make sweeping allegations of illegality,” Mr Keim told the Herald Sun.
“It involves a degree of intimidation that is likely to [and appears intended to] deter others from engaging in serious political debate on the possibility that it may offend those who hold the machinery of power.”
Dr Ashbolt said the recent Wikileaks release consisting of over 200,000 classified documents represented information that was gossipy more than harmful, much of it already in the public domain.
“They were damaging to the sort of pride governments have in that they were kept secret from people, but not damaging to the health of democracy, which has been quite positive,” he said.
Dr Ashbolt mentioned that it was Wikileaks that had alerted Australians to the level of censorship proposed under the Labor Government’s proposed Internet censorship laws.
“One of the things Wikileaks exposed was the degree to which the proposed legislation in Australia will close down political sites, not simply child pornography,” he explained, noting that with the sort of powers proposed, the Government could also close down access to Wikileaks.
Mark Stephens says his client’s actions were no different to any other media organisation that also relies on leaked documents for information.
“Julian Assange is giving out useful information – journalists, investigative journalists, have been doing that for years,” he said on the ABC.
“What he got, unasked for, he didn’t hack for it, was the electronic equivalent of a brown envelope. Quality investigative journalists have been working with brown envelopes and material given to them to hold our governments to account, to ascertain whether what they are doing is what we want them to be doing.
“If Julian Assange is a criminal, then every national newspaper that has published exactly the same stories is also a criminal. Are we going to lock up editors from all over the planet? I don’t think so.”
Mr Stephens said having an Australian passport had amounted to nothing in Mr Assange’s case.
“He has had no assistance or offers of assistance ... by the Australian authorities in Sweden or London or America,” he said. “One has to question what the value of an Australian passport is, whether you agree with what he has done or not.”
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