Justice for Assange

Call on the U.S. and U.K. to say NO to Extradition

WIFP and other supporters of Julian Assange will gather at U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, 1 pm – 3 pm. Please join us.

Supporters of the First Amendment will gather to protest the continued persecution of Julian Assange, a publisher who exposed war crimes, and calling on the U.S. to drop attempts to extradite Assange to the U.S.   We will gather at the corner of 10^th Street and Pennsylvania Ave, NW, for a program of speakers & music. 

Speakers at the rally will include:  journalists Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil of The Grayzone; Leonardo Flores of CodePink; Louis Wolf of Covert Action Quarterly; Esther Iverem of WPFW and Marsha Coleman-Abedayo of the No Fear Coalition.  Music and cultural performances will be presented by Luci Murphy of the Black Workers’ Center chorus.

We protest the Biden administration’s continued efforts to prosecute a publisher and criminalize journalism. It is the first case of a publisher being tried under the Espionage Act. Trump’s prosecution has become President Biden’s and AG Merrick Garland’s legacy.

On May 17, at the same time as our rally at the DOJ, supporters of Assange will be gathering in London (6 PM)  – calling on U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel to refuse to “rubber-stamp” the High Court’s approval of the extradition of Assange (announced on Dec 10, 2021).  The High Court overruled an earlier court decision blocking the extradition, largely on humanitarian grounds.  (Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser had ruled that Julian Assange would be subjected to cruel and extreme conditions if extradited to the US for further proceedings).

Julian Assange has been jailed for over 3 years in the U.K. Belmarsh prison despite not being convicted of a crime. Assange may be the one indicted, but it is anti-war journalism that is on trial in the U.K. In this case of extra-territorial over-reach, the US wants to extradite Assange – a non-U.S. national for journalism outside the U.S. For revealing accurate information about serious war crimes, Assange faces a sentence of 175 years in a U.S. supermax prison under conditions of extreme isolation.

We protest the punishment by process and torture of Assange by not granting him bail during this drawn out appeal process, and depriving him of much needed medical attention during the past 3 years of his incarceration at Belmarsh. He is being treated so harshly for one reason only: to freeze disclosure and to freeze dissent. Injustice to Assange is an injustice to us all.

Our loyalty as citizens should not be to government, but rather to the principles of democracy and freedom. Assange publishing classified information reinforced our right to know what the government was doing in our name. The WikiLeaks publications were never a threat to our freedom but revealed a systemic coverup of military secrets.

We call on the Biden administration to immediately drop all charges against Julian Assange and end efforts to seek his extradition to the U.S., for further trial proceedings.

DC Action For Assange

Update: Some of us during the protest at the Department of Justice 5/17/22.