John Pilger to speak at March 3 Sydney rally to defend Julian Assange
By
the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
2 February 2019
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is pleased to announce that highly respected journalist and filmmaker John Pilger will address the March 3 demonstration at the Martin Place Amphitheatre in Sydney, which will demand that the Australian government immediately act to secure the freedom of persecuted WikiLeaks’ publisher and Australian citizen Julian Assange. The following week, on March 10, the SEP will hold a demonstration at the State Library in Swanston Street, in the centre of Melbourne. Both rallies will be live-streamed via Facebook to a world audience.
John Pilger is a trustee of the Courage Foundation, which is committed to the defence of persecuted journalists and whistleblowers. Pilger has been, and remains, at the forefront of the fight to defend Julian Assange. On June 17, 2018, he delivered a widely circulated speech at the rally organised by the SEP at Sydney Town Hall Square. He told the audience present and watching online: “Assange’s ‘crime’ is to have broken a silence. No investigative journalism in my lifetime can equal the importance of what WikiLeaks has done in calling rapacious power to account.”
Pilger’s condemnation of the establishment media, and its role in spreading lies and falsifications about Julian Assange, as “Vichy journalism”—after the French regime that collaborated with the Nazi occupation of France—has been cited around the world.
As well as John Pilger, the Sydney rally will be addressed by SEP national secretary James Cogan, who has made the defence of Assange a central aspect of his political and journalistic work. Cogan will also be the main…