From rogue to victim: what Australia sees in Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was greeted as a hero on Wednesday before arriving back in his home country of Australia after pleading guilty to legal charges of breaching the US spy agency’s mandate.

Australian politicians raced to post statements supporting a petition proposal that would lead to independence. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, now Australia’s ambassador to the United States, even joined her in the US court on the Pacific island of Saipan.

Mr. Assange’s case seemed to have ended in an independent outpost — the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth center of the United States through its post-World War II imperialism.

He ended his standoff with the US government at some distance from Washington; over the next 14 years he disclosed classified military and diplomatic documents, including mysterious information about US espionage and the killing of civilians during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was disclosed.

He was a divisive figure – a courageous journalist to some, a reckless anarchist who endangered American citizens to others. He became even more polarizing during the 2016 presidential election, when WikiLeaks revealed thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee that were stolen by Russian hackers.

However, over the next five years in a British prison, and after marriage and becoming a father, Mr Assange’s personality became more attractive to Australians. Somewhere along the way, he became an underdog forced to endure the wrath of the superpowers, and in a land inhabited by convicts, a rebellious man who had completed his year and deserved to go back home.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the court cases freeing Mr Assange were “a welcome development”.

“This is something that has been patiently considered, worked out in a calibrated way, which is how Australia conducts itself internationally,” he said on Wednesday.

He added, “Regardless of your views about Mr. Assange’s activities, his case has dragged on for too long.”

Critics saw a lack of introspection in that response. What it omitted was that Australia’s personal espionage rules are among the toughest in the democratic world, carrying penalties of up to twenty-five years in prison and crippling protections for journalism. And it bypassed Albany management’s enduring resistance to the nation’s failure to provide better transparency with data and increase whistle-blower coverage rules, despite frustration over many secret situations.

Johan Lidberg, a Labor instructor of journalism at Melbourne’s Monash College who has worked with the United States on world press freedom, said he was surprised by the widespread political support for Mr Assange. He came for an hour to unite conservatives and hard-working MPs in favor of conservative leaders. However how?

Mr Lidberg said assurances for Mr Assange began to build in Australia in 2016, when, at President Trump’s insistence, he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy and put into Belmarsh prison, south-east London.

“Their case went from hacking, to journalism, to publishing, to advocacy, to a humanitarian issue,” he said. “It may be that the Australian myth of ‘the fair go’ may have played a role. “It was seen that he was not given a fair chance and he was mistreated.”

The desire to protect duty-bound journalism – a factor for many US citizens who were concerned that a conviction for Mr Assange would send a threatening message to newspapers and resources – was no longer a major concern in Australia, where there is a sovereign pronouncement. Has no constitutional right.

James Curran, a University of Sydney historical past coach and global affairs columnist, said Australians do not necessarily have the same reverence as US citizens for “the whole culture of secrecy and classified documents”.

When a bipartisan staff of Australian politicians was in Washington in October to lobby Mr. Assange, they did not press him on his willingness to provide security to the fourth estate.

“He highlighted how China and Russia are using the Assange case as evidence of Western hypocrisy when it comes to the handling of political prisoners,” Mr Curran said. “It took effect in Washington.”

The American legal system had already lost some of its identity. Many Australians now hold a whispered disapproval of the American prison justice system, which they view as overly effective and punitive, including the death penalty in some states and long prison sentences in most.

“It’s the high rates of imprisonment, the abuse of the plea-bargaining process, even the conduct of American police,” said Hugh White, a former Australian defense official and now an instructor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. “I think even a lot of conservative people were skeptical that Assange would get ‘fair leeway’ at the hands of the DOJ.”

Later, when Secretary of State Antony J. As Blinken visited Australia for high-level defense talks in Brisbane, he was asked about Mr Assange’s case – and bristled at the idea that Mr Assange was a victim of American whims.

In an outdoor lecture surrounded by military veterans, Mr Blinken said he understood “the concerns and views of the Australian people” but it was “very important that our friends here” understand Mr Assange’s “alleged role”. “One of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.”

His response appeared defensive and condescending to many Australians. Australia and the US are still side-by-side allies, having fought together in wars to date, and they are now building a collective security framework to discourage potential Chinese aggression. However Mr Blinken’s voice helped Mr Assange create a proxy for another component of Australian dating in the United States: an enduring dilemma regarding the idea of ​​American exceptionalism.

“To some extent this is a reflection of the dilemma that great powers always create among their smaller satellites, but it is not just that,” Mr White said.

He said that among conservative, Anglo-centric Australians, there may also be some resentment about the US displacing the British Empire in the upcoming World War II. Others felt that the United States had consistently been too quick to address its friends’ troubles, and that by moving to prosecute Mr. Assange, “the United States looks inappropriately vindictive,” he said.

Getting the United States to step back – and pay attention with a little extra shame – appears to be something Australian politicians are desperate to respect. As well as Mr Albanese, rural Conservative MPs and Liberals from the Vegetable Party also praised Mr Assange’s shed. Mr Rudd smiled widely during his personal appearance in court and mistook it for a defense lawyer.

On the other hand, the excitement over his victory will probably subside. Will the nearest round of leaks reveal secrets about Australia? What if Mr Assange and WikiLeaks choose a side in the US election or the fight in Ukraine that most Australians do not support?

Mr Curran said, “The case can be made that WikiLeaks helped Trump and Putin more than anyone else and put people’s lives at risk.” “It doesn’t seem to have really entered into the Australian debate.”