Assange: “Journalism is not a crime. I did my job”

Brussels – Julian Assange speaks for the first time as a free man: “Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their work. Journalism is not a crime.” The founder of Wikileaks, after agreeing to a “pardon” with the US authorities for the release of secret documents that earned him an arrest order for conspiracy, appears at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to retrace his story and denounce a system, the democratic one, and a model, the Western one, that he sees as “sick”. He accuses “the system” and stikes Uncle Sam.

“The political basis for the punitive acts of the US government against me was about the publication of the truth about what the US government had done,” he says, referring to the publication of classified documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, documenting crimes committed by US soldiers. The problem, he says, is that Washington has crossed a line that is also a dangerous precedent.

“It is hard not to draw a line between the US government crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism and the current cold climate for freedom of expression.” Assange builds his defence, which is a direct attack, on history. He cites the moment when Julius Caesar decided to rewrite the established order and fate of ancient Rome by crossing the river that marked the natural boundary between Rome and the rest of the world. In 49 BC, Caesar defied the Senate, penetrating with a small army of his own where no military presence was permitted. Caesar took the path of lawlessness to overthrow logic and order. This is what, Assange warns, in the contemporary era, the United States has done.

At the Council of Europe, he accuses the country that Europe has always looked to as a role model of “criminalising” journalism and press freedom, key factors in assessing the health of a democracy. “I want to be absolutely clear: I am not free because the system worked. I am free because I have pleaded guilty to journalism.” An accusation brought by Assange where rights should be protected, safeguarded, guaranteed. That is what the Council of Europe is for; that is what the international organisation was born for.

He recalls his last years of life, 12, between forced residence and detention, first in the Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom and then in the British prison in Belmarsh. Political prisoner before, criminal during and even more so after. An aspect, the latter, on which he insists, “The criminalisation of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.”

In the midst of all this are also the charges against him for other crimes, such as rape, later dismissed. Attempts to deny acquired rights, formally recognised, and which, in the words of the founder of Wikileaks, demonstrate “the weaknesses of existing guarantees.” Assange is unrepentant. He took a plea deal to avoid more jail time. He is an example which he himself cannot count among the best. Because the moral of his story is that, in the end, “freedom of expression is at a dark crossroads.”