Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Julian Assange is on the verge of being deported and his more than 100-page long appeal detailing the sheer atrocity of his incarceration was not upheld. The response to it was just three pages long. It looks like he will be deported to the US. I shudder to think what awaits Mr. Assange. This is arguably the most significant journalist in the history of journalism. He exposed many war crimes and wrong doings and revealed more confidential documentation than anybody else. His work allowed many media organisations to piggyback on this and win major awards in the process. It made the careers of some of them. Most of these organisations and journalists have been conspicuously silent; when they have spoken, it has been meek and mealy-mouthed. We know why he was jailed and had to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy. This was lawfare, a weaponisation of the legal system against someone who revealed inconvenient truths. In this day and age, we need truth tellers like Julian Assange.

Recently we lost Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the Pentagon Papers. He is often recognised as one of the original whistleblowers. He frequently held up Julian's work. He recognised that WikiLeaks and its type of journalism allowed a safe space for the release of public interest documentation that was confidential in nature. Julian will likely never live with his wife again, with his parents or with his siblings, and his children will miss out on precious years with their father. How can we talk about a free media when the world’s leading journalist is confined to a cell?

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