‘If war can be started by lies, then maybe peace can be started by truth.’ ~ Julian Assange.
It’s a simple profound statement said by someone who knows that as a journalist the truth doesn’t set you free. It gets you locked up in solitary confinement in Belmarsh Prison. The truth can cost your life. Assange knows that too well.
He is a Walkley-winning journalist who did what journalists are supposed to do. He published material that exposed the US war machine. He told the world who they are. It’s made him, not them, the enemy. We live in an Orwellian world where lies and cover-up are currency. Where truth is more dangerous than guns. Where we lock up our heroes and watch them die.
This is the ethos of The Trust Fall: Julian Assange. Filmmaker Kym Stanton from Films for Change has made this epic documentary on Assange, now on international release. He has trawled through over 24 hours of interviews and hundreds of hours of archival footage to create a two-hour film that Stanton himself calls ‘a seminar’.
If you want the long-form of this story, the one not seen in mainstream media, this is it.
In watching this film, I am reminded of how brave Assange was. That he was compelled to tell the truth even though he knew the consequence. That everything he has been accused of is without proof or foundation, including the allegation that his revelations put people at risk. This was just not true.
Julian Assange is the story powerful governments tell their people about truth tellers. He is the gun to the head of the modern media. When Assange released Collateral Murder in 2010, the video footage that shows US troops callously murdering innocent civilians in Iraq, Assange made himself the target. He showed that it’s innocent civilians and truth tellers who are the target.
The murderers in the video are free. They have never been indicted for trial. The man who did his job has been politically persecuted, vilified and locked up and now he awaits the outcome of his extradition to the US. We won’t know the outcome of that until sometime this month, but it’s not looking good.
Assange is very unwell. It’s clear he won’t make it.
Our PM and Attorney-General speak in broad terms about ‘bringing this to an end’. But what does that mean? Why haven’t they fought harder? Why hasn’t our government done what our government is supposed to do for an Australian citizen? Assange should be free by now. Don’t just vote to bring him home. Go and get him.
Instead, now we must wait to see if the British courts are going to allow him to be extradited to the US where he faces charges that could see him face 175 years behind bars. He will be tortured. He could get the death penalty.
And he hasn’t killed anyone. He has just told the truth.
When asked about the free press in Staton’s film, journalist and human rights firebrand John Pilger, in one of his last interviews before his death last year, said ‘What free press?’
Chilling. There are currently over 500 journalists behind bars around the world for telling the truth.
Assange can’t rely on government. He needs us. He needs us to make this an issue. He needs us to rise up to demand his release. Every one of us must apply pressure.
Because as quoted in The Trust Fall, ‘once it becomes a crime to tell the truth, we are living in a tyranny’.
Set Assange free. Bring him home. Now.
Kym Staton’s film The Trust Fall is screening with a Q&A by the director at Kyogle Cinemas on 14 March and at The Regent in Murwillumbah on 15 March. There are currently no screenings in Byron or Ballina.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
