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The Belmarsh Tribunal: Video link
December 20, 2022 IN WIP
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On January 20, 2023, Democracy Now! is livestreaming the Belmarsh Tribunal from Washington, D.C. The event will feature expert testimony from journalists, whistleblowers, lawyers, publishers and parliamentarians on assaults to press freedom and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Watch here live at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, January 20. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, will chair the tribunal, which is being organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.
In the United States and around the world, state actors are cracking down on journalists, sources, and publishers in a globally coordinated campaign to disrupt the public’s access to information and shut off their sources of dissent.
A landmark case in this campaign is that of Julian Assange, the publisher who founded WikiLeaks, exposed crimes by the United States government, and now faces 175 years in prison if extradited from the Belmarsh Prison where he is currently held in the United Kingdom.
Inspired by the Russell-Sartre Tribunals of the Vietnam War, the Belmarsh Tribunal brings together a range of expert witnesses – from constitutional lawyers, to acclaimed journalists and human rights defenders – to present evidence of this attack on publishers and to seek justice for the crimes they expose.
The First Amendment — and the life of Julian Assange — are at stake. Join us in person or online.
Day of the Imprisoned Writer: The Case of Julian Assange & Write to Julian Assange
Day of the Imprisoned Writer: The Case of Julian Assange
In June this year UK Home Secretary Priti Patel signed an order to extradite Julian Assange to the US. There, the co-founder of WikiLeaks would face 18 criminal charges, including espionage, with a combined prison sentence of 175 years.
Julian Assange’s father John Shipton has strenuously and creatively pursued freedom for Julian, refocusing his case in the public eye. Stella Assange met Julian Assange in London in 2011 when she joined his international legal team. They have two children together, and married in March 2022 in Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London. Barrister and renowned international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson has represented Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for almost a decade and is intimately familiar with the case.
At this event held on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer and presented in partnership with PEN Melbourne, Shipton, Stella Assange and Robinson explore the ongoing case of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and its wider implications for freedom of speech, with award-winning journalist Rachael Brown, who covered Julian Assange’s extradition hearing as an ABC Europe correspondent.
People say that (writers) are pretty powerless: we don’t have an army, we don’t have a bureaucracy. But if that were true, then why would writers be arrested?... Because the spoken word is powerful.
— John Ralston Saul on the work of PEN International
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