Albanese makes firmest call yet for Julian Assange’s freedom, as case marks ‘rare crack’ in Australia-US ties
- The WikiLeaks founder faces a UK hearing next week that will determine his chances of an appeal against extradition to the US
- Analysts say there will be ‘considerable community concern’ if an ally of Australia incarcerates a local journalist for doing his job
The move has proved significant after an initial reluctance by Albanese to push Washington harder in dropping the pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder, who is facing espionage charges and more than 100 years in prison. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last year said Australians should understand American “sensitivities”.
Analysts say the latest development marks a “rare crack” in Canberra-Washington ties, with considerable community concern expected if an ally of Australia incarcerates a local journalist for “simply doing his job”.
On Wednesday, in his firmest call yet for Assange’s release, Albanese and 85 other members of the house of representatives voted to support a motion to end Assange’s incarceration that stemmed from him “doing his job as a journalist” to reveal “evidence of misconduct by the US”.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton and 41 members of his party voted against the motion.
In parliament on Thursday, Albanese followed up on his vote with a message to the US that the Australian government had a responsibility to make representations for its citizens, as it had done previously.
“In recent times, it is important that we have a calibrated and deliberate approach to this engagement,” he said. “It’s not up to Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries. But it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded.”
Can Australia persuade the US to drop its bid to extradite Julian Assange?
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who moved the motion to support Assange’s release, said in parliament on Wednesday that the injustice of Assange’s prosecution was “absolutely breathtaking”.
Assange’s high court hearing in Britain next week has already whipped up a media frenzy.
The court will determine whether Assange has exhausted all appeals.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said last week that if Assange was extradited to the US, “he would be at risk of treatment amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment”.
On Wednesday, 35 law professors wrote to the US Department of Justice that the espionage charges against Assange posed a threat to the nation’s first amendment, which protected free speech.
They reiterated that journalists should be entitled to publish true information, even if their sources obtained the information unlawfully.
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Family and supporters of Julian Assange rally for his release in Sydney
Earlier this week, Amnesty International warned of a profound “chilling effect” on global media freedom and serious human rights violations if Assange was extradited.
Greg Barns, an Australian human rights lawyer and adviser to the Australian Assange Campaign, told This Week in Asia that next week’s hearing was crucial, and if Assange lost his case, his family had relayed that he could be at risk of dying in the US.
Assange’s WikiLeaks published evidence of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 through a leak by former US intelligence officer Chelsea Manning.
The US commuted Manning’s sentence but Assange had to seek refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years and has since 2019 been locked up at the Belmarsh prison in England.
US-Australia alliance
Aside from the serious implications to journalists, the case shines the light on the strength – and weakness – of the US-Australia alliance.
Albanese, who had repeatedly said “enough was enough”, had raised the issue with US President Joe Biden, but as such calls seemingly fell on deaf ears, Australian lawmakers grew impatient.
Last year, some criticised Washington for its refusal to release Assange despite Australia housing more US troops.
“I will also note that prime minister after prime minister in this place has signed Australia up to Aukus, an arrangement that, in our view, is one where Australia fronts up with a chequebook and does what it’s told to do by the other partners,” another MP Adam Bandt said on Wednesday, referring to the nuclear-powered submarine deal signed by Australia, Britain and the US.
“If governments think that participation in the Aukus agreement and alliance is so critical, surely part of that should be the insistence on human rights and the proper treatment of our citizens.”
‘Dragged on for too long’, Australia’s Wong says of Assange WikiLeaks case
Last year, a delegation of 60 federal Australian lawmakers from different parties flew to Washington to fight for Assange’s release.
Emma Shortis, a senior researcher at the Australia Institute think tank, said in an analysis that it represented “a rare crack in the wall of bipartisan support for the sacrosanct [US-Australia] alliance”.
One of the lawmakers who went, Barnaby Joyce, argued that “extraterritoriality was an incredibly dangerous precedent”. This was raised again on Wednesday.
“What happens if an Australian journalist offends China at a time we’re seeking to improve our relationship with China? The precedent will have been set that that journalist may well find him or herself on a plane to China,” Wilkie said.
Bridget Archer, the Liberal Party member who voted against her own colleagues to support the motion to free Assange, said she believed the case did not have a legal solution and that it was “inherently political”.
Still, there was a chance these would amount to little, as Canberra might still exercise caution over jeopardising its relationship with Washington, but should Assange be extradited, there would be “considerable community concern that an ally keeps an award-winning journalist incarcerated for simply doing his job”, said Scott Burchill, an honorary fellow in international relations at Deakin University.
Indeed, parliamentarian Keith Pitt who voted against the motion to save Assange on Wednesday told local press the vote could damage Australia’s relationship with one of its closest allies.
But Barns said, however, that the vote was little changed from the stance Canberra had always adopted.
He and other legal experts had also raised a similar case when the former Howard government and Bush administration intervened to release David Hicks, an Australian citizen who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and detained at Guantanamo Bay from 2001.
