Safety of Journalists Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Richard Burgon
Main Page: Richard Burgon (Independent - Leeds East)Department Debates - View all Richard Burgon's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I want to start by condemning the recent Israeli air force attacks that destroyed the building housing al-Jazeera and over a dozen media outlets during the assault on Gaza. They say that truth is the first casualty of war. It is clear that this was done to try to stop the world seeing the truth about that horrific assault on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis that it created.
I want to focus today on the role that brave journalists play in exposing war crimes. Regrettably, our country has been involved in too many unjust wars in recent years—wars of conquest, wars for control and wars for oil. Crimes were committed in those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including, in Iraq, the killing of journalists. Much of what we know about those crimes was exposed by the fearless work of a journalist—a journalist who exposed unlawful killing; a journalist who exposed US renditions; a journalist who exposed the horrors of Guantanamo Bay; a journalist invited to work in this country by The Guardian newspaper; a journalist, who, as we meet today in Parliament for this debate, is sitting in a British high-security prison, solely because of his journalism; a journalist who faces extradition to the United States for his award-winning journalism, carried out here in Britain; a journalist who faces a 175-year sentence for exposing war crimes, which would mean he would spend the rest of his life behind bars in a super-maximum security prison; a journalist whose potential extradition is opposed by Amnesty International, the National Union of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. That journalist is Julian Assange.
I appeal to President Joe Biden, who is in this country for the G7 summit, to drop the charges so that the extradition is called off. Present Biden was, of course, vice-president when President Obama took the decision not to prosecute Julian Assange because of the huge damage it would have done to press freedom. Prosecuting Julian Assange would, in the words of Amnesty International, still have
“a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression”.
That is why I raise this case today. That is why I urge President Biden to do the right thing.