We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS), strongly condemn the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange by British authorities under the direction of the US government. We defend his rights as a journalist and demand his immediate release.

Assange has earned the ire of the US for exposing the truth about US behind-the-scenes machinations in its drive to carry out foreign interventions and launch wars of aggression for regime change and economic plunder. Wikileaks has published volumes of material documenting the crimes of US imperialism around the world.

The arrest of Assange is based on a charge of engaging in theft of US state secrets. Assange is accused of conspiring with US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning to crack a password on a Defense Department computer network for classified documents and communications to download classified records and transmit them to WikiLeaks.

The charge sheet released to the public by the US State Department states that between January 2010 and May 2010, Manning downloaded databases from US government departments and agencies containing nearly “90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activity reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US State Department cables.”

These materials including videos and classified documents revealed the crimes of US imperialism that the US wanted to keep secret from the world. One of the most damning evidence of US crimes is a video footage from an Apache helicopter viewed by millions around the world showing Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, his driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Baghdad. A group of adults and children in a minivan arrives and attempts to rescue the wounded but they are also fired upon.

The arrest of Julian Assange exposes the utter hypocrisy of the US, its most trusted running dog, Britain, and other Western governments of their avowals for democracy, freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

Experts and scholars say that this is a direct assault on the basic rights of journalists protected by the First Amendment in the US Constitution. But the ruling regime in the US will even trample upon its own constitution, as it has done in justifying the use of torture and other criminal practices.

Every US ruling regime has time and again proven that it can tear to pieces universally accepted conventions on international relations in order to carry out interference in the internal affairs of other countries and launch wars of aggression and plunder in pursuit of US imperialist interests.

For almost 7 years, the US and its lackeys tried every foul means to get their hands on Assange and stop him from carrying on with his journalistic work. Julian Assange was able to survive almost seven years of threats, harassments and pressure from the US and its lackeys because of his own courage in defending his rights and the overwhelming support of the people of the world and some sympathetic governments.

Despite all the threats and pressures, Assange continued with his journalistic work while holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. His defiance inspired whistleblowers in the belly of the beast like Edward Snowden to come forward and expose the crimes of US imperialism around the world.

The US is an imperialist power in decline. But it is still capable of doing the most hideous crimes against the people of the world in its desperation to prevent its total collapse. The people of the world must therefore continue to resist this monster wherever it rears its head until it is mortally wounded and collapses like all the empires before it. And, the work of such courageous journalists like Julian Assange serves the goal of humankind in ridding the world of the evils of imperialism and human oppression.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #PoliticalPrisoners #ILPS #JulianAssange

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration reported June 19 that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived at its London Embassy and asked for asylum. Assange stated that with a, “regrettable factual statement of abandonment received by the authorities of my country, Australia, who state that they will not defend even my minimum guarantees before any government and delegate in the constitution of a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and treason, and the guarantees it offers to its nationals, ignoring the obligation to protect its citizens, who is persecuted politically.

“Such statements make it impossible for me to return to my home country and puts me in a state of helplessness by being requested to be interrogated by the Kingdom of Sweden, where its top officials have openly attacked me, and investigated me for political crimes in the United States of America, a country where the death penalty for such offenses is still in force.”

The government of Ecuador states that it is evaluating the request of Julian Assange and any decision on it will take into account respect for the rules and principles of the International Law and the traditional policy of Ecuador to safeguard human rights.

#UnitedKingdom #AntiwarMovement #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Ecuador #WikiLeaks #JulianAssange

The Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression expresses our solidarity for Julian Assange. Amy Goodman reported in the Guardian that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has a sealed indictment in the U.S., according to leaked emails from Stratfor, an intelligence company. The emails were hacked by Anonymous and then published by WikiLeaks. The Guardian and other sources had already reported that a secret federal grand jury in Virginia was investigating Assange for allegedly violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified U.S. State Department documents.

This news brings to mind parallels with our situation. Our committee is organizing in solidarity with the 23 peace and international solidarity activists who have been subpoenaed to testify at a secret federal grand jury in Chicago that alleges material support for terrorism. This investigation is because of their activism.

We believe that the grand jury in the case of the Peace 23 was convened in August 2009, but we are unaware of whether or not it is still meeting. The prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago have told their lawyers repeatedly that they are expecting multiple indictments, but we don’t know when this will occur or if, like in Assange’s case, they have the indictments and are waiting until later to release them. Either way, the Peace 23 wake up every day not knowing if the FBI will be back their doors again – this time to take them into custody.

The grand juries that investigated Assange and that are or were investigating the Peace 23 are similar in many ways. Both meet in secret and are fundamentally undemocratic. Suspects and witnesses are subpoenaed to testify to the grand jury but no one is allowed representation by a lawyer. Both have a wide scope for their “investigation” and neither is limited by a judge or even by much of a time table. Not surprisingly, 99.9% of all federal defendants called before a federal grand jury are indicted, since the grand jury system has been designed to help prosecutors.

Another similarity is the political nature of these cases. Assange is being investigated for publicizing the truth about U.S. foreign policy and the Peace 23 are being targeted for opposing U.S. foreign policy. Materials published by WikiLeaks have been invaluable to the anti-war movement. The true horrors of U.S. occupation in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been documented. Exposing war crimes is not a crime! And neither is solidarity or anti-war activism! End grand jury repression now!

#MinneapolisMN #InJusticeSystem #WikiLeaks #JulianAssange #grandJury #MinnesotaCommitteeToStopFBIRepression #PoliticalRepression

In April 2010, a video leaked from top secret military files revealed a 2007 U.S. Army helicopter assault on Baghdad where eighteen civilians were murdered, including two journalists from the news agency Reuters. The video created international uproar over the brutality of U.S. war on Iraq and infuriated the Pentagon.

The U.S. government is scrambling to catch the people responsible for releasing the video, trying to prevent further leaks. A second leaked video that is soon to be released depicts a 2009 massacre in Garani, Afghanistan, where 140 civilians were killed in the occupation’s bloodiest massacre. Most of the victims were children and teenagers.

A 22-year old army soldier, Bradley Manning, supposedly confessed to releasing the videos and other secret files to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Since the video, called Collateral Murder was released by Wikileaks two months ago, it has been viewed by millions, fueling anger over the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Until its release, the U.S. maintained that all the victims were “insurgents.” The video had previously been security encoded and hidden in top secret files by the U.S. government, which refused to release the video for three years, until it was leaked.

Manning was an Army intelligence analyst, stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq. He cited his growing disapproval of the U.S. occupation of Iraq as motivation to put himself at risk to release the documents. Manning allegedly claimed to have released as many as 260,000 government communications that would embarrass Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and thousands of other officials for corrupt deals with foreign puppet governments. This has prompted the U.S. to step up their efforts to stop whistleblowers.

Manning was turned in by an informant in May and is being held without charge at a U.S. military base in Kuwait. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) released a statement on the incident that says, “If true, Bradley's actions are heroic and he deserves our support.”

Wikileaks Targeted by U.S.

Wikileaks, which is set to release the Garani massacre video, has been the second major target of the U.S. government as the Obama administration tries to maintain some support for the eight-year old occupation. The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said he is planning to release video of the Garani, Afghanistan massacre “very soon” but would not give an exact date to avoid a government crackdown. Assange says he does not know who the source of the video was, but he said he will defend Bradley Manning.

Lawyers for Assange said he faces a definite threat from the U.S. government. A recent Wikileaks twitter message read: “Looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.” U.S. intelligence officials have been frantically trying to locate Assange, in order to stop the release of the Garani massacre video and other documents that would expose ugly secrets of U.S. imperialism. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Vietnam War documents in the 1970s and was a target of hit men, told Assange to keep his location a secret. “I think he would not be safe, even physically, entirely wherever he is,” Ellsberg said.

U.S. Cracks Down on Whistleblowers

“The Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks,” according to the New York Times, “In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions.”

In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center named Wikileaks a national security threat, in a secret document that was ultimately leaked to Wikileaks. In the same year, federal courts attempted to shut down the website after it released a secret set of operation instructions from the infamous Guantánamo Bay ‘detention center.’ The website easily worked around the attack, which only disabled their domain name. The U.S. government is now ramping up their efforts to stop the flow of information which is greatly damaging public support of U.S. occupations worldwide.

This month, the U.S. Senate will consider a bill dubbed “the internet kill switch” which would allow the president to seize control of the internet and shut it off completely in case of a “national cyber emergency.” This bill comes just as Wikileaks promises to release the Garani massacre video online.

The Occupation Continues

More massacres are likely, with nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, now more than in Iraq. The military is escalating war on the Afghan people, but have been unable to hold any ground to the resistance fighters, who control huge amounts of the country. The approval ratings of the occupations continue to fall, as more troops are deployed and more troops are killed. While the U.S. is unable to manufacture a positive image of the occupation, they are increasingly relying on censorship, by restricting information from leaving combat zones. Whistleblowers like Manning and Assange will continue to play an important role in defeating U.S. cover-ups. Ultimately, the occupations will not be allowed to continue. The only answer for the Afghan people is complete and immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces.

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #Afghanistan #Iraq #IraqVeteransAgainstTheWar #WikiLeaks #GaraniMassacre #BradleyManning #CollateralMurder #IVAW #JulianAssange #Asia