Another letter to PM Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong re Julian Assange

 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Foreign Minister, Penny Wong

22nd July 2022

 

Dear Mr Albanese and Ms Wong

 

                                    re: Julian Assange: 'Enough is enough'

 

Further to my letters of 2nd June, 5th and 14th July, and referencing my 12th July email to the AFP, copied to Attorney General Mark Dreyfus. 

 

Within what time frame might I expect a response to my enquiries? Or is it the intention of your new government to ignore legitimate questions asked by constituents in relation to Julian Assange? I understand that you are now in receipt of hundreds of letters such as mine from concerned voters?

 

President Obrador of Mexico has made public that he has given a letter to US President Joe Biden defending Julian Assange as a man innocent of any serious crime committed in the United States; as having not caused anyone's death or violated anyone's human rights.

 

Have you, Prime Minister, given a similar letter to President Biden? Or articulated comparable sentiments in your meetings with him? If so, could you please make this public, as you have your "raising the case of jailed Australian engineer Robert Pether with the Iraqi leader  Mustafa al-Kadhimi?"

 

Why do you advocate on behalf of Robert Pether and not Julian Assange?

 

Many supporters of Assange cling to the hope that your declaration, Prime Minister, that you "do not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange", in conjunction with your comments relating to 'quiet diplomacy', will lead to action on your part to secure Assange's release. An increasing number of us, however, are coming to the conclusion that you, Penny Wong and Mark Dreyfus are employing Orwellian doublespeak to create the illusion that your government is being proactive in this matter, when in fact a deal has been done with President Biden that will see Assange in jail for many years to come - in the US and possibly Australia also.

 

If this be the case, Assange will almost certainly die in jail and your government, Prime Minister, will go down in history as one that abandoned, and essentially sentence to death, an Australian citizen whose only crime was to make war crimes truths available to the public that the US wished to remain secret. And which, it seems, your government believes should have remained secret?

 

yours sincerely

 

James Ricketson