Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise, once again, the case of Julian Assange. Last week, while at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I attended a side event that was chaired by Dr. Pieter Omtzigt MP of the Netherlands and member of the European People’s Party. He is a very impressive politician who I have worked with before. He spoke passionately about why Julian Assange should be free. He spoke not just on the personal horrific treatment that Assange suffered, which was described, by the way, as a prolonged public execution, but also about the fact it is essential to the freedom of the press that a journalist should not be imprisoned and threatened with 175 years of imprisonment because he told the truth about war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas. That is why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a host of newspapers across the world, including The Irish Times, have called for his release.

That evening, I heard directly from Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, about the impact on his two young children of seeing their father locked up for 23 hours a day in horrific conditions at Belmarsh Prison, where he is released just for one hour a day. Let us be clear as to why this is happening. This is happening because the USA wants to send a clear message that if you tell the truth about what its armies did and its war crimes, you will face a lifetime in jail.

I was encouraged by the fact that there is a broadening cross-party consensus in Europe that we cannot stand for this and we have to stand up for freedom for Julian Assange. The Deputy Leader has taken courageous stands before. I ask her to call for his freedom today, along with her colleague from the European People’s Party, and call for a debate on the issue. We cannot allow this. We cannot pick and choose when it comes to human rights. If we rightly call out the crimes that Russia has made against people in Ukraine and we rightly call out the crimes against people imprisoned for speaking the truth in Russian, then we have to equally stand up for Julian Assange. The silence to date from far too many politicians is not acceptable anymore. I ask all of us to stand with Julian Assange.