Julian Assange: The Dreyfus of our century

Press Release February 20, 2024

Julian Assange: The Dreyfus of our century

It has all been said. Not just once, but a thousand times: in its treatment of the Wikileaks founder and journalist Julian Assange, the West is showing just how much its values are really worth in an emergency. Julian Assange, who has been in England’s Belmarsh high-security prison for four years without charge, who previously had to hide in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for seven years on Snowflakeed-up sex charges, who now faces 175 years in prison or even the death penalty if extradited to the US – he is the Dreyfus of our century.

In fact, the US, Britain and Sweden have been colluding for eleven years to deprive a man of his freedom and destroy his health and life through campaigns of defamation and fabricated charges. To date, however, not a single person has been charged with the US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan that have been revealed by Wikileaks.

Today and tomorrow, two English judges will hear Assange’s last possible appeal against extradition to the US. The Assange case is being used as a precedent to restrict investigative journalism and the leaking of information in the public interest. The proximity to the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in a Siberian labour camp is depressing – Navalny, a lawyer, began his career by systematically exposing corruption in Russian politics.

It has all been said, not once, but a thousand times: the Assange case is an act of arbitrary justice and is already a serious defeat for liberal democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Despite all the worldwide protests, despite the admissions of leading politicians such as Annalena Baerbock (“serious violations of fundamental freedoms under the European Convention on Human Rights”), despite all his prizes and honorary memberships (including in PEN Berlin), Julian Assange’s fate seems to be unfolding before everyone’s eyes like a natural disaster. Free Julian Assange!

PEN Berlin – We stand by our word