Canberra\u00a0, SANA -The Albanese government insists it will not conduct \u201cdiplomacy by megaphone\u201d as it faces calls to do more to prevent the extradition of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to the US.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the British home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the extradition of Assange to the US, where he is charged with breaching the US Espionage Act and faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted. He has 14 days to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n
Supporters of the Australian citizen, including on Labor\u2019s backbench, have urged the new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to do more to pressure the United States to drop the case, which has been running since 2010, when WikiLeaks published a trove of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars along with diplomatic cables.<\/p>\n
The minister for employment and workplace relations, Tony Burke, said the government\u2019s view was that the case had gone on too long and that conversations were happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to conduct diplomacy by megaphone. This case has gone on for far too long. We said that in opposition, we\u2019ve repeated that in government,\u201d Burke told Sky News on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue needs to be brought to a close. Australia is not a party to the prosecution that\u2019s happening here [and] each country has its own legal system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe days of diplomacy being conducted and conversations with government being conducted by megaphone, text messages being exposed \u2013 that was the way the previous government behaved. We\u2019ve been building constructive relationships again with our allies and they\u2019re conversations that happen government to government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labor MP Julian Hill, who has been a vocal advocate for Assange, described Patel\u2019s decision to approve the extradition as \u201cappalling\u201d, and compared his plight with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was the source of the leak.<\/p>\n
\u201cManning, who leaked classified material exposing US war crimes, has been pardoned, yet Assange who published it (a journalistic activity), is facing an effective death sentence,\u201d he said on Twitter on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere can never be a legal solution to this case. It is inherently political. Political cases should never be the subject of extradition. We should speak up for our fellow Australian and request these charges be dropped and he not be extradited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manning was released in 2017 after Barack Obama commuted her 35-year military prison sentence in one of his final acts as president.<\/p>\n
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie called on Albanese to make an immediate and direct appeal to the US president, Joe Biden, and the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, on behalf of Assange.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no doubt that Anthony Albanese has enough influence over the British prime minister to bring this to an end if he picks up the phone and says, \u2018end this madness\u2019,\u201d Wilkie said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no doubt that Anthony Albanese has a good enough relationship with Joe Biden to pick up the phone to the US president and say, \u2018end this madness\u2019.\u201dhe added.<\/p>\n
Karen Percy, the federal president of the media division of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, said the potential extradition of Assange to the US was \u201ca dangerous assault on international journalism\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe urge the new Australian government to act on Julian Assange\u2019s behalf and lobby for his release,\u201d Percy said.<\/p>\n
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, who was also a vocal supporter of Assange, said the new government needed to pressure the US to drop the case, saying he did not believe a soft diplomatic approach would be sufficient to secure his release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new government has to make a clear statement, because if you speak in riddles, you are saying nothing at all,\u201d Joyce added.<\/p>\n
He said that while he had attempted to rally support for Assange, \u201cI had a different position to the previous government\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a joint statement on Friday, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, and the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, issued a response to the extradition ruling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to convey our expectations that Mr Assange is entitled to due process, humane and fair treatment, access to proper medical care, and access to his legal team,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Australian government has been clear in our view that Mr Assange\u2019s case has dragged on for too long and that it should be brought to a close.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to express this view to the governments of the United Kingdom and United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
English Bulletin \/ Amer Dawa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canberra\u00a0, SANA -The Albanese government insists it will not conduct \u201cdiplomacy by megaphone\u201d as it faces calls to do more to prevent the extradition of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to the US. On Saturday, the British home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the extradition of Assange to the US, where he is charged with breaching the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":275238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-arabic-international","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/275238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}