Supporters vow ongoing Assange campaign
AAP
December 10, 2010, 4:55 pm
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Demonstrators in Brisbane promised a continuing campaign on behalf of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after a second rally in the city in two days.
About 350 people gathered outside the Brisbane office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to support Mr Assange, held in Britain until an extradition application to face allegations of sexual assault in Sweden is settled.
Many see his detention as an attempt to hinder the continued release of government files through WikiLeaks.
After a series of speeches objecting to Assange's detention and the Australian government's response, the protesters marched peacefully through central Brisbane.
Lawyer Peter Russo, who defended Indian doctor Mahomed Haneef against failed terrorism charges told the rally it was important to understand that the real issue at stake in the WikiLeaks affair is freedom.
"It's not only the freedom of the individual it's the freedom of all of us," he said.
Mr Russo said it was a "fallacy" for governments to believe they had to keep secrets from their people in order to govern, and called for due legal process for Assange.
The Ann Street rally was larger than another held in the city on Thursday night, which drew about 250 people.
Friday's rally was read messages from London-based Australian journalist John Pilger and US dissident academic Noam Chomsky.
Mr Pilger described the defence of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks "one of the most important issues of my lifetime".
He said the issue pitted the military power of the US against the power of public opinion.
"If the Australian prime minister doesn't understand this, we Australians need to remind her that she may head a mercenary government but we are not a mercenary people," Mr Pilger said.
Professor Chomsky, a long-term critic of US foreign policy, said Mr Assange is performing a civic duty.
"Systems of power wish to protect themselves from citizens, while at the same time sparing no effort to intrude into private lives so as to better establish their control," he said.
A significant police presence escorted the chanting marchers, many linked to socialist groups, through the CBD as lunchtime workers and bemused shoppers gave them a generally warm reception.
"Assange is a hero of our time, telling truth is not a crime," the marchers chanted.
Placards praised Mr Assange as Australia's best journalist and urged senior reporters Kerry O'Brien and Laurie Oakes to surrender to him the Walkley awards for journalism they received on Thursday night.
The rally coincides with International Human Rights Day.
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The Sydney Morning Herald
Legal fury at 'war on free speech' Karen Kissane
December 11, 2010
One of the protesters at the Melbourne rally in support of Australian WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. Photo: Luis Enrique Asqui
A MELBOURNE lawyer and former boss of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has criticised her government for its handling of WikiLeaks and its Australian founder, Julian Assange.
Peter Gordon, whose legal firm made Ms Gillard the first female partner of Slater and Gordon, said her comment that Mr Assange had broken the law was baseless.
He said the fact that people such as Ms Gillard and Attorney-General Robert McClelland - both of whom he knew to be good lawyers and decent people - could be driven to behave in this way was a sobering reminder of ''the seductive and compulsive draw of power''.
Advertisement: Story continues below Mr Gordon was speaking on Thursday night at a WikiLeaks forum attended by 250 lawyers and civil libertarians at the Law Institute of Victoria.
In today's Age opinion page, he writes: ''If the Wikileaks disclosures tell us anything, it is that no government, whatever its political colours, is going to hesitate for a nanosecond to conflate the notion of 'national security' with 'my own career security'.''
He calls for a challenge to the ''war on information … call it what it is - a growing and insidious attack on free speech''.
Mr Gordon's stance was backed by several top barristers, who said neither official secrets nor terror laws provided any offences under which Mr Assange could be charged in Australia.
Mr Assange also received support from more than 500 people who attended a rally outside the State Library in Melbourne. The rally was one of several held around the country, with backers calling for a ban on WikiLeaks censorship and for Mr Assange to be freed.
Julian Burnside, QC, said of the government: ''I think they are trying to defend the indefensible.''
He said the state had an obligation to protect citizens who got into trouble in a foreign country. ''They ignored that obligation and instead sided with the Americans. They even went so far as to threaten to cancel his passport. That's exactly the opposite of what any self-respecting country ought to do.''
Ms Gillard insists the actions of Mr Assange, an Australian citizen, are illegal. Attorney-General Robert McClelland has said Wikileaks' actions are likely to be illegal.
Yesterday Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor said it was entirely up to federal police to say whether Mr Assange had committed any crimes.
Several barristers agreed that it would be stretching credulity to try to mount a case based on terror laws, such as a claim that Mr Assange had recklessly helped al-Qaeda by publishing a list of the sites the US most feared would be terror targets.
Greg Barns, a barrister with experience of Australian terror trials, said: ''Even under the outrageous curtailing of freedom of speech that the anti-terror laws represent in this country, you couldn't even at a stretch maintain that there was an intention or even recklessness on the part of Mr Assange.''
Mr Barns and others pointed out that any charge laid against Mr Assange would also have to be laid against all the large media outlets that had republished his documents.
Even the United States had so far failed in its search for an offence, Mr Assange's Melbourne solicitor, Rob Stary, said. ''This issue has also been examined by the Congressional Research Service in the US, and they made the same observation. He's the second person in the chain; he receives material, but he doesn't take it himself.'' Therefore, no offence could be identified, he said.
Mr Stary said lawyers at the forum expressed ''enormous disquiet as to the role of government attempting to suppress this information'' and had criticised Ms Gillard and Mr McClelland for undermining the presumption of innocence.
Mr Burnside said: ''I think, standing back from it, what we have seen is what happens to a citizen who breaks the unwritten law about embarrassing the governments of powerful countries … If they want to avoid embarrassment, they shouldn't shut down freedom of information. They should stop acting embarrassingly.''
With JARED LYNCH and AAP
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