Dear Senator,

I am writing to demand you take action to assist Julian Assange. He must not be allowed to be extradited to the US to face a politicised trial. 

You must not sit idle while an Australian citizen is being pursued by the US Government for journalistic activity undertaken while in the UK. 

It is the fundamental responsibility of the Australian Government to protect and ensure his human rights are not violated. To date, the Australian Government has utterly failed. We must act now. 

You must act now.

The Australian Government has been silently complicit in the psychological torture of Julian Assange. You have been complicit in the attack on a free press. You are threatening values we treasure in our society – a journalists right to publish, and a citizen’s right to know. 

His indictment under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a watershed moment for press freedoms, condemned by media groups and civil liberties organizations from the ACLU to Reporters without Borders to the editors of the Washington Post. 

As the New York Times Editorial Board warned, the charges are “aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/julian-assange-wikileaks.html

“He’s an Australian. He’s not American. He wasn’t in the US when he spoke out about war crimes. Put simply, he must be allowed to return to Australia.”
Andrew Wilkie, MP & Co Chair of the “Bring Assange Home” Australian parliamentary group.

He is facing extradition to the USA to face 175 years imprisonment and possible execution for publishing news material that was in the public interest. 

The information contained in his publications were not sourced by him, but rather were delivered to him by whistleblowers. 

Whistleblower sourced information is the usual occupational practice of an investigative journalist in a functioning democracy. This case highlights clear human rights abuses of Julian Assange, serious perversions of justice and a direct attack on the very fabric of democracy across western democracies.

 92% of Australians, according to 60 Minutes Australia, want the Australian Government to intervene and Bring Assange Home. 

As Jeremy Hunt, British MP said:
We must “stand together to make it an international taboo, of the highest order to murder, arrest or detain journalists just for doing their job”. 

Julian Assange has been determined by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture or other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment as being subjected to psychological torture – a “crime against humanity” according to the International Criminal Court (The Hague) 

It is now your responsibility to act. It is your duty to stand on the right side of history – for a free press, for protecting journalists and for Governments to be held accountable by informed and free-thinking citizenry. 

Regards,