Showing posts with label # Free Chelsea Manning # Free Speech #Whistleblowr # Wikileaks # political prisoner # News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label # Free Chelsea Manning # Free Speech #Whistleblowr # Wikileaks # political prisoner # News. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 March 2019

Free Chelsea Manning Again

 

In 2013  the  courageous Amrican activist. human rights heroine and  US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000 confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Mannings leak of military data was driven, she has said  by 'love of country and a sense of duty for others;'
In the documents that would become known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghanistan War Logs, Manning exposed the military's standing orders to ignore the many allegations of physical and sexual abuse and torture of detainees perpetrated by the Iraqi Security Forces. She exposed contractors trafficking children in Afghanistan, and many instances in both countries where large numbers of civilian casualties went conveniently unreported between 2004 and 2009.
Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military video that WikiLeaks titled 'Collateral Murder'. It showed the indiscriminate slaying of up to eighteen people in Baghdad on 12 July, 2007. The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, showed the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist and his rescuers. A second Reuters staff member, employed as a driver and camera assistant, was also killed. Two young children, whose father was among those killed, were seriously wounded.
The video, together with the transcript of army exchanges during the indiscriminate US killings, shocked many around the world:
Let's shoot.
Light 'em all up.
Come on, fire!
Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
keep shoot.
keep shoot.
[...]
Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
Nice.
Were it not for Chelsea Manning’s courageous disclosures, certain U.S. military atrocities might have been kept secret. She brought to light secret U.S. drone strikes carried out in Yemen, as well as the fact that Egypt's State Security Investigation Service, a wing of the police force which has committed obscene human rights violations, received training from the FBI. Her revelations were also key to exposing U.S. approval of the 2009 coup against the elected government in Honduras and U.S. dealings with dictators and oligarchs across the Middle East, which helped spark the Arab Spring rebellions.
Prior to her arrest in 2010, Chelsea Manning wrote: “I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are. Because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Manning, who’s now 31, spent a substantial amount of time in solitary confinement before her trial, in addition to years in prison afterward. She publicly came out as transgender just after she was sentenced, and she struggled with mental health while behind bars, resulting at one point in another week of solitary confinement. While in prison, Manning twice attempted to commit suicide.She was released in 2017, after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, two days before he left office following sustained pressure from activists.
In a move her defenders called "an outrageous government overreach and absolutely inhumane, on 8 March – International Women's Day – Manning was once again jailed after she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange, before a grand jury in Virginia, and was  incarcerated in the Alexandria, VA federal detention center. Her imprisonment can extend through the term of the Grand Jury, possibly 18 months, and the U.S. courts could allow formation of future Grand Juries, potentially jailing her again.
She said in a statement
'I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.'Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.'I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.'
Chelsea Manning is widely considered to be an American hero for risking her own freedom to expose war crimes committed by the United States military in Iraq. Many compare her with Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers exposing U.S. government lies about the Viet Nam War. Ellsberg calls Manning a patriot:
"She’s a very patriotic person. I know no one more patriotic, actually, willing to risk and even give her own freedom, her own life, in order to preserve our constitutional freedoms and the Constitution. I admired her then. I admire her now. And right now she’s refusing to take part in basically a conspiracy against press freedom in this country, led by the president of the United States and the secretary of state."
In an interview last week with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA, John Pilger described the significance, and injustice, of the recent jailing of Chelsea Manning. The irony of her being imprisoned on International Women's Day was first noted, then Pilger pointed to the shameful silence from the women's movement, and other human rights activists:
'Where are they [human rights activists] on Chelsea Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the Court House? Where is Amnesty International? Where are the women's groups? Where are the LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why aren't they massing in support of Chelsea Manning? Instead I see Chelsea Manning's story relegated in a sort of, "Oh well, that's almost inevitable this is going to happen." But this [...] is the most significant act of principle; an inspiration to all decent people; to democrats, to people who believe in justice. So where are the groups who have been very loud in their condemnation – rightly - of Donald Trump? Where are they? Why are we not hearing from them?'
The U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia is fooling itself if it thinks locking up Manning will compel her to testify. She has  bravely made  it clear that she has no interest in testifying in such a secretive setting. Her only offense is an unwillingness to cooperate with the same government that locked her up for exposing the kinds of horrors its military forces perpetrated in Iraq and  Afghanistan.
Chelsea Manning is a political prisoner who is being used as an example, her  imprisonment is cruel, punitive, criminal and totally unjustifiable. The White House wants to set a precedent for jailing whistle-blowers and journalists who publish information critical of the military and state apparatus. Even now, after her original sentence has been commuted, the state continues to pursue her and demands that she testify in secret hearings about events that she has already gone on the public record about . We  must demand the immediate and unconditional release of Chelsea Manning. There will always be a welcome for here in Wales.

Sign petition: https://bit.ly/2F9qU2X

Write to her

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, A0181426
William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center
2001 Mill Road
Alexandria, VA 22314

She can NOT accept books or cards.
She can receive letters, as well as newspapers.