The Progressive International pays respects to the Traditional Owners of the land and their Elders, past and present.
We acknowledge their ongoing resistance to the destructive forces of colonialism and their sustained connection to water and land.
Sovereignty was never ceded.
MARY KOSTAKIDAS
“Coming to you from Sydney University, home of the Foundation which conferred on Julian Assange the Sydney Peace Medal for his exceptional courage and conviction that truth matters and justice depends on it.” - @MaryKostakidis
“For revealing how power works, what governments get up to…and the tools used to deceive citizens, his punishment has been brutal,” says @MaryKostakidis
The result of being pursued by the world’s most powerful govt, acc. to former UN Rapporteur @NilsMelzer, amounts to torture.
MARK DAVIS:
“Emphatically, Julian Assange redacted the most dangerous material from the Afghan War Logs,” says Davis.
“I was with him the evening he did so; He redacted 10,000 names…”
Refers to Australia’s prestigious @Walkleys who awarded Assange for his outstanding contribution to journalism.
Quoting the judges:
“Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency … and the public’s right to know.”
KERRY O’BRIEN
“The longer Assange remains caught in the web of US legal procedure without demonstrable and effective intervention by the Australian Government to bring him home, the more the Australian Government’s credibility will suffer. "
“Julian faces 175 yrs in prison for committing acts of journalism, for the same publications for which he has won awards the world over,” says @Suigenerisjen
“The @NYTimes and @WashingtonPost made clear, the indictment criminalises
public interest journalism.”
JENNIFER ROBINSON
“The Freedom of the Press Foundation has called (Julian’s prosecution) the most terrifying threat to free speech in the 21 st century,” says @Suigenerisjen
“The American Government is lying about Julian Assange. That’s the bottom line,” says @JohnKiriakou.
“… the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally broad and vague (and) the freedom of the press is resting on this case.”
JOHN KIRIAKOU
“If they can prosecute Assange they can prosecute anybody,” says @JohnKiriakou
When they say they’ll treat Julian fairly, it’s a lie. The Eastern District of Virginia Court is made up of CIA, Dept. of Homeland Security, Govt. agencies. Julian won’t stand a chance.
DEAN YATES:
“My staff? Killed on my watch,” says Yates.
Lawyers from @Reuters tried to get a copy of the tape from the Pentagon so we could better protect our staff in Iraq.
“They refused … Then Assange published video of the entire attack.”
“Collateral Murder is pure truth-telling,” says Yates.
“Yet the US didn’t prosecute the men who pulled the trigger or anyone else in the chain of command … The real criminals are the architects of the invasion – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld.”
“Julian is a moral innovator; he made moral gains which had an immense effect on human life,”
says @KellieTranter
“Posterity will pay Julian the highest honour for putting into the world the things that we most value: truth, transparency and justice.”
KELLIE TRANTER
“@AlboMP Goes to Washington should be the story of an Australian prime minister standing up for truth and fairness and the rights of a citizen, securing the release of a person who has put his life on the line for those same values for the benefit of (all).”
BOB CARR
“The American involved in the exposure of American war crimes walks free … The Aussie is still being pursued,” says @BobJCarr
“These are war crimes and we know about them … because Julian Assange published them.”
“Without question, it's time for the persecution, prosecution and incarceration of Assange to come to an end,” says @Josh4Freo
“The parliamentary friendship group has called upon the US government to end the extradition process and set Julian Assange free."
DR. MONIQUE RYAN MP
“We’ll continue to speak to our own Government and hold them to account,” says @Mon4Kooyong
“As members of the Australian Govt, we need to do what we can to protect the freedom and rights of all Australians, but particularly those who speak truth to power."
SENATOR DAVID SHOEBRIDGE
“It should never be a crime to tell the truth,” says @DavidShoebridge
“Assange is a case study in how this country treats whistleblowers,” says @DavidShoebridge
“What we’re seeing has moved beyond neglect into an institutionalised attack, with the aim of silencing not just Julian but anyone who dares follow his example.”
BRIDGET ARCHER MP
“The ongoing persecution of Assange offends my sense of natural justice, human dignity and fairness,” says @BridgetArcherMP
“There can never be a legal solution to this case. It’s inherently political.”
.@YanisVaroufakis calls on @AlboMP to “move heaven and earth to unsully the bad name of previous Australian govts that stood idly by while one of its citizens was taken to the cleaners by recalcitrant, violent American administrators. Mr. Albanese, free Julian. Bring him home.”
BERNARD COLLAERY
"As with Witness K in Australia, speaking truth is Julian’s alleged crime. Detaining Julian Assange with the stated purpose of shutting down @WikiLeaks is precisely the conduct, namely hostage taking, that the United States pressed the world to outlaw."
BERNARD COLLAERY to Australian Prime Minister @AlboMP, who is “in his prime.”
“Mr Albanese, don’t leave an awful blemish on your legacy.”
“Australia has the power to bring Julian home,” says @Stella_Assange.
“@AlboMP, more than anyone, holds Julian's fate in his hands. I ask Prime Minister Albanese to take Julian's fate in his hands and bring him home to our kids, to me. End his suffering."
Thank you to this evening’s speakers, partners, organisers and everyone who joined the fifth #BelmarshTribunal to #FreeAssange.
Please join us in solidarity over the coming weeks in the following actions 👇
The US began to invade Panama on this day in 1989.
Washington dispatched more than 20,000 soldiers to the Latin American nation to overthrow the regime of former CIA asset General Manuel Noriega.
Codenamed Operation Just Cause, the US invasion killed as many as 3,000 people, wreaking such destruction that local ambulance drivers referred to parts of Panama City as “little Hiroshima”.
On this day in 1975, representatives of the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Santiago, Chile to establish a covert network of transnational repression.
Inspired by the Truman Doctrine and engineered by the CIA, Operation Condor (known as Plan Cóndor in Spanish) enabled South America’s US-backed dictatorships to abduct, torture and murder dissidents across the continent – and around the globe.
For Eduardo Galleano, Operation Condor was the "MERCOSUR of terror”.
Within three years, Operation Condor had expanded to include eight of South America’s 13 countries.
Operation Gladio was launched by NATO and the CIA on this day in 1956.
First exposed in Italy in 1990, ‘Gladio’ was the codename for covert networks of "stay behind" agents ostensibly established to defend Europe in the event of Soviet invasion.
In reality, these networks secretly worked to thwart the growth of the communist movement across Europe throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Even before the end of the Second World War, Allies like the United States, Great Britain, and France were anxious about the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
🇵🇸 Today, the @ProgIntl delegation concludes its investigation of Israel’s systematic violations of international law with a clear and urgent call to governments across the globe: Now is the time for a total energy, economic and arms embargo against Israel.
Download the full report from the delegation: bit.ly/3CkHG0n
On 28 October 2024, an emergency international delegation landed in Palestine to amplify evidence of the Israeli regime’s systematic violations of international law since the start of its genocide in Gaza one year ago.
Over the course of a week in the field, our delegates found clear evidence of what Palestinian citizens have been telling the world for years: Israel relies on systematic violations of international law against the Palestinian people to advance its project of settler colonialism.
On 7 November 1917, the Russian working class sent shockwaves through the world by overthrowing the Tsar, dismantling Russia’s budding capitalism, and establishing history’s first proletarian state.
The October Revolution began months earlier, sparked by the women textile workers of Petrograd. They took to the streets with simple demands: bread, and the “return of our husbands from the trenches” of World War I.
Together with thousands of workers, they mobilized across the city in what became known as the February Revolution, launching a movement that would soon bring the nation’s workers to power.
On this day in 1952, the British colonial government in Kenya declared a state of emergency in response to the Mau Mau uprising.
During the eight-year crackdown that followed, 90,000 Kenyans were killed or injured and over one million were forcibly resettled into villages under military occupation.
The Pan-African journalist George Padmore described the British repression as “the biggest colonial war in Africa since the Boer war.”