Sweden

The personal saga of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange has been used to overshadow the ground-breaking journalism of WikiLeaks in exposing the secrets of governments and corporations around the world.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange is right to seek political asylum in Ecuador. He was left with no other choice after the Australian government made clear it would do nothing to prevent his extradition to the United States on espionage charges. His real “crime” is groundbreaking journalism, which has exposed the lies and crimes of governments around the world, especially the US.

Global Friends of WikiLeaks is an independent collective of WikiLeaks supporters. It is not affiliated with WikiLeaks. The letter below was originally posted here on June 20. You can sign an online petition to the government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa in support of Julian Assange's extradition request. * * *

While WikiLeaks was preoccupied with preparing its new “The Global Intelligence Files”, where we released on February 27 actual documents from the privatised spying world in collaboration with 25 newspapers, Swedish tabloid Expressen was preoccupied with filling its paper with false reports based on thin air. In late February, Expressen claimed WikiLeaks was preparing a “smear campaign against Sweden” and cited as sources both a WikiLeaks "insider" and a WikiLeaks “internal memo”.

Renowned investigative journalist and film maker John Pilger interviewed Wikileaks' editor-in-chief about the “war on WikiLeaks” in response to the website “speaking truth to power”.

The counting of votes in the September 19 Swedish parliamentary elections sent out shock waves. The far right won its first parliamentary seats, and for the first time in modern Swedish political history, an incumbent non-Social Democrats government has been able to win a national election. As such, the process of dismantling the Swedish welfare state is set to continue unabated. The governing right-wing Alliance emerged as the largest bloc, but failed to keep its majority. With 173 seats, it is two seats short of controlling the assembly on its own.

The Swedish government is proposing new legislation to allow far-reaching surveillance aimed at protecting “national security”, including monitoring phone calls and emails. In the debate around the unpopular bill, deputy prime minister Maud Olofsson admitted that the government has already been tapping citizen’s phones for decades and that the law would simply formalise existing practice. Critics of the bill range from the left to the Swedish intelligence agency Sapo. The Local reported that Sapo’s chief legal counsel Lars-Ake Johansson said the proposal “may lead to drastic violations of personal integrity”.