We in the UK live in a nation in which a journalist has been arrested, and held on remand, in solitary confinement, in one of the most secure prisons we have, for having reported on the misdeeds of government and by so doing upset one of our allies, the USA.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard against the guards? While state power increases, and brave reporters present to us what little escapes their systems of security, there is an exponential need for transparency in government which grows more opaque every day.
While we sit under threat of state force at any time, state actors protect themselves and each other with special immunity from prosecution and sealing reports and documents for decades after they are produced to ensure the public never find out until wrong doers are long gone.
This imbalance had the semblance of a check against it through a free press, but the arrest and inhumane incarceration of Julian Assange has serious implications for the essential freedom of journalists to report on and criticise the state. Such a heavy handed approach is surely to have the unspoken effect of silencing our free press – the message is being sent home to every reporter loud and clear.
So why are we here? The purpose of LibertyForAssange.uk is to be a platform for promoting the release of Julian Assange. We are not an organising body or a campaign group, but smaller independent groups may find the information appearing on our site, along with posters, banners and other materials, which are provided from a broadly libertarian perspective, helpful to their campaigns as they become available. The imprisonment of Julian Assange is at once a personal issue for him and his family, a libertarian issue and a human issue. We should all be deeply concerned about his situation, and view it as not only a threat to Julian, but the threat to us all it is surely intended to be.