GUEST BLOG: Alan William Preston – Open letter to NZ Parliament regarding Julian Assange

This issue affects ALL New Zealanders.

We, New Zealanders For Julian Assange,  hereby request that UNDER URGENCY that New Zealand Parliament issues a Diplomatic Protest to the U.K. Government asking that they comply, as co-signatories,  with the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State To State Relations, by IMMEDIATELY releasing Julian Assange , Prisoner # A9379AY from HMP Belmarsh where he has been arbitrarily detained for 1,822 days.

AND

We, New Zealanders For Julian Assange,  hereby request that the New Zealand Parliament issues a Diplomatic Protest  to the United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice to ask that they respect  Resolution 934 – “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”

The UK High Court has given the  government of the U.S. until Friday this week ( 12th of April 2024 ) to provide assurances that Julian Asssange will receive a fair trial and that he will not be subject to the death penalty.

There are serious concerns about this as a U.S. Government plot to kidnap and kill Julian Assange was revealed in 2023.

Julian Assange is a multi-award winning Australian journalist/publisher – editor-in-chief and founder of Wikileaks who has been subject to ‘intimidation and reprisals’ by the U.S. and the U.K. establishment for having published evidence of their military having committed multiple serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions by U.S. military during their illegal invasion and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He has been subject to arbitrary detention ( as deemed by the United Nations Working Group ) for 1,822 days in London’s Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison ( since the 11th of April 2019 ) in 23 hour per day solitary confinement in conditions deemed by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to be be ‘psychological torture‘ – which is in contravention of the Section 134 of the U.K. Criminal Justice Act – prohibiting all forms of torture and of Section 5 of the Univiersal Declaration of Human Rights.

The U.K. Government is a co-signatory and in September 2021 they reiterated their intention to uphold this agreement in a message to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, stating ”

“Arbitrary detention is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and its use is a tool of political intimidation.

Arbitrary detention not only violates human rights, but also undermines the trust in institutions that keeps societies safe and open.

We know that persons in marginalised and vulnerable situations, as well as human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society activists are more often arbitrarily detained.

We further recognise that persons who are arbitrarily detained are at greater risk of being subjected to other human rights violations.”

N.B. Previous attempts ( February 2021 )by New Zealanders For Julian Assange to convey similar messages to our Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Trade elicited a pro-forma response that indicated a lack of awareness of fundamental aspects of the illegal mis-handling of  this case ( Hon. Nanaia Mahuta ) and more latterly , have gone unanswered( Rt Hon Winston Peters ) .

Aotearoa For Assange‘s convenor Matt Ó Branáin was at the most recent Application for Leave to Appeal hearings at the High Court in London held between the 20th and 22nd of March 2024.

Before the hearings Matt contacted several New Zealand media organisations to share what he had witnessed but none pursued this valuable opportunity.

Matt has put together a substantial 20 minute review of the hearings with some valuable commentary on the context in which this is happening and the very serious implications the outcome of this case has for the future of our transparent and accountable democratic governance model.   

A 128 minute documentary about the case of Julian Assnge ,The Trust Fall by Kym Staton ( currently in New Zealand ) of Films For Change ( Australia ) is currently screening at cinemas throughout New Zealand , Australia and the U.K.

Julian Assange’s brother Gabrielle Shipton made ‘Ithaka’ about Julian’s father John Shipton’s campaign to save his son from extradition to the U.S. where he could be locked up for 175 years.

Listen to Radio New Zealand long-form interviews with key figures involved in this case conducted between 2020 and 2022 on the New Zealanders For Julian Assange website.

N.B. The full version of this text ( with links embedded ) will be available /shareable from this page on our website.