Socialist Alliance statement, December 7.
Defend Wikileaks and Julian Assange!
Australia should break the military alliance with US!
“The Australian government should defend and support Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, and their efforts to expose the lies, duplicities and outright crimes of the US government and its allies”, said Peter Boyle, national convener of the Socialist Alliance.
“We condemn the Australian government for collaborating with the American government in hunting Julian Assange down.
“The exposure of classified US government cables and other material by Wikileaks is an enormous plus for all those who are fighting for truth and democracy and against war and exploitation. Wikileaks and Assange deserve our strongest support.
“The Wikileaks exposures are not a threat to life and safety. Rather, the forces that want to silence Wikileaks are the most deadly threat to human lives, as Wikileaks releases of US documents on the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan so dramatically show.
“The Gillard government must immediately guarantee that it will extend to Assange the basic rights of any other Australian citizen ... It must also offer no assistance at all to the brutal US campaign to close Wikileaks and silence Assange.
Boyle said: “The Gillard government must immediately guarantee that it will extend to Assange the basic rights of any other Australian citizen to return to Australia and get any consular support and assistance requested.
“It must also offer no assistance at all to the brutal US campaign to close Wikileaks and silence Assange.
“An Australian government acting in the interest of the people would do everything in its power to protect Assange from the grave threats that have been made to arrest or even assassinate him for what he has done.
“It would offer to help keep the Wikileaks websites up, in the face of mounting cyber attacks and denials of service and hosting. And it would refuse to cooperate with any attempts to have Assange detained and or extradited.”
Boyle concluded: “A government for the people would also help maximise Wikileak's exposure of the war criminals and immediately break the Australian-US military alliance.”
The Socialist Alliance is joining with other groups and individuals in a campaign of solidarity with Wikileaks, and to force the Gillard government to abide by its responsibilities to Julian Assange as an Australian citizen.