As the political implications of Julian Assange’s return to Australia filter through Canberra, reactions from abroad have been swift.
Figures from human rights groups and the intelligence world have condemned the legacy of WikiLeaks’ mass release of sensitive documents.
Andrei Sannikov, from the Index on Censorship, which supports the free speech of persecuted people, claimed that Wikileaks’ Russian representative Israel Shamir in 2010 “informed on the Belarus opposition helping to jail us”.
“He and his colleagues put so many human lives in mortal danger, not only of the US intelligence and their sources, but also of freedom fighters.”
Assange was “no hero and no journalist”, Sannikov wrote.
Between 2010 and 2011, Wikileaks released 75,000 Afghanistan war-related documents, with subsequent media reports revealing that “unredacted names of Afghan citizens co-operating with US and coalition forces were included in the material”, according to the 2020 paper Espionage, the First Amendment, and the Case against Julian Assange.
In the same period, 400,000 Iraq war-related reports, 800 Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs, and over 100,000 State Department cables were published.
The State Department warned WikiLeaks that “the disclosure of these cables would [p]lace at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals – from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security”, the academic report noted.
“The US State Department is reported to have undertaken efforts to warn hundreds of human rights activists and foreign government officials regarding the threat posed by the disclosure of their identities.”
A “handful” of these individuals were ultimately relocated to safer locations, either within their home countries or abroad. It was also reported that Afghan and Pakistani citizens had become more reluctant to speak with human rights investigators and that contact between human rights activists and diplomats had diminished.
Berlin-based Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the pro-democracy European Resilience Initiative Centre, wrote: “Julian Assange has enabled prosecution of people I would be honoured to die protecting. Those who praise this shitty person as a hero are either idiots or enemies of freedom and dignity.”
Former CIA analyst Gail Helt wrote: “Folks. Julian Assange is no hero.”
“He is a despicable Russian asset who harmed hundreds of people and dismissed them like they didn’t matter.
“I’m okay with the plea agreement because I hope it means I’ll see his name in my social media feeds a lot less, but let’s not venerate the man. He caused great harm.”