Opinion: Will Assange be received as a hero by Australians?

Julian Assange is no martyr, but the Trump administration’s continued persecution of the WikiLeaks founder has made him one – in the eyes of many Australians.

In his home country, Assange had long been a darling of human rights lawyers, left-wing and far-right figures who took up his cause, largely motivated by an anti-establishment mindset.

Seen by some as an attention-seeking narcissist who thought he was above the law and constantly clashed with those around him, Assange was a difficult figure for the average public to appreciate — despite several celebrities, including the Hollywood Pamela Anderson, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and British rap star MIA, who seemed mesmerized by a charm few others saw.

But since his arrest in 2019 at the request of Donald Trump’s administration and his incarceration in the maximum security Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom — after he was unceremoniously expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he spent seven years avoiding extradition to Sweden for facing questions over accusations of sexual crimes – attitudes towards Assange have softened.

A recent poll showed support in Australia for freeing Assange at 71%.

That’s partly because the Trump administration’s persecution was seen as overblown.

Although a British court ruled that Assange “went beyond merely encouraging” a whistleblower when he offered to help former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning crack a password and cover her tracks online, the charges against Assange related The subsequent publication of hundreds of thousands of sensitive messages could result in up to 175 years in prison if he were found guilty.

The second factor was time.

An example of this is the emotional shift of Australian Senator Matt Canavan of the National Party, who is part of the conservative faction of Australian politics and is one of the parliamentarians who has recently taken up Assange’s cause. It wasn’t always like this.

“Enough is enough, I think everyone has come to that conclusion,” Canavan said.

Assange, now 52, ​​has spent the last two decades avoiding extradition orders to avoid being sent to the US, where he fears permanent incarceration or even premature death. He resisted this because pleading guilty would require his physical presence in the US, where he fears life in prison.

In the end, this week’s agreement for him to plead guilty in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific and route to Australia from London, was an ingenious solution.

By pleading guilty, as per the agreement with the US, Assange will have served five years in solitary confinement.

In Canavan’s view, “he served his time.”

Canavan said his own journey toward Assange began when he was a college student and blindly supported then-US President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq due to his right-wing political views.

Assange’s WikiLeaks revelations put Western human intelligence sources at risk because of the way they were dumped on the internet without being redacted. But early releases exposed shocking incidents on battlefields, including a US aircrew firing at Iraqi civilians from a helicopter. Two Reuters journalists were also killed in the incident.

Canavan regrets supporting this war and is grateful to WikiLeaks for its disclosures.

“I was excited and ended up looking like a fool because they lied about weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

“I was a fan of that war and I’m happy to admit I was wrong because we’re still dealing with the consequences of going into that war.”

Another concern that united many across the Australian political divide was the idea that the US, or any country, could charge one of its citizens for breaking laws that were not broken on American soil.

As Canavan and many of Assange’s supporters see it, the WikiLeaks founder would plead guilty only under duress.

But it’s a deal that many of Assange’s supporters have urged him to accept, including Australian Labor MP Julian Hill, who has long argued that no one should judge Assange if he chose a deal in exchange for living with his children and wife, Stella Assange, who tirelessly defended her cause.

Hill told me that when he first started supporting Assange’s case, it was “certainly not fashionable for those who spoke from principle,” but that “over the years, public awareness and opinion gradually changed.”

Last year, Hill brokered a meeting with a group of representatives from different parties and US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy.

“We made clear, in a very respectful way, the intensity of feelings and the growing community sentiment around the need to resolve this and the unnecessary complication this was causing to the Australia-US relationship,” he said.

Then there was the combination of US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and Australia’s newly elected Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Albanese’s left-wing base is uncomfortable with increasing arms exchanges with the US, including AUKUS, the program to acquire nuclear submarines.

Thus, Albanese felt pressure from his MPs, supporters, media and prominent social figures in Australia to secure Assange’s freedom in a way that a right-wing leader such as his predecessor, Liberal Party Prime Minister Scott Morrison, never did. .

And he succeeded.

“The Prime Minister deserves enormous credit for his determination and persistence over many years and for the judgment in the way he handled the matter,” Hill said, a sentiment echoed by Canavan.

Assange’s case has always attracted publicity, as his supporters have continued to ask the public for money to fund their global travel and media campaigns.

This showed no sign of abating on Tuesday (25), when Stella Assange claimed they needed to spend half a million dollars to pay for the charter flight home.

Assange has not been seen or heard from in public for years and there will be huge media interest in hearing from him directly.

He is expected to be heading to Canberra, where he will be welcomed by some, including his family and most ardent supporters.

However, Prime Minister Albanese would be wise to remember that support for ending a protracted case does not necessarily equate to local affection for a man long accused of supporting anti-Western interests.