Film & Talk: Hacking Justice / Leaks for Future
Hosted by Disruption Network Lab

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is free.
He was forced to plead guilty to avoid being in prison for life, and for charges he should never have received for carrying out a journalistic act. If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been extradited to the US, he would have faced a sentence of up to 175 years in prison for publishing US war crimes, including torture, murder and other human rights violations.

In the case against Julian Assange, having used the Espionage Act for obtaining and publishing confidential documents from Chelsea Manning in 2010 is a condemnation against freedom of the press and information. The trial of Julian Assange has set a precedent for the use of the Espionage Act against journalists and publishers. This is an unprecedented attack on press freedom and “anyone who publishes facts about state crimes of the highest order”, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has stated.

The right to obtain and publish information received from a source should be protected. In fact, the Espionage Act in this case contradicts the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Julian Assange’s freedom is certainly a victory, but there are still battles to be fought to prevent such cases from happening again and the Espionage Act from being used to target journalists and whistleblowers.

On the night of July 8, which should have been the day before Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition from the UK to the US we will celebrate the freedom of Julian Assange and connect the fight for freedom of information through the work of Assange and WikiLeaks with the fight for climate justice.

In addition to other important revelations, WikiLeaks has published many important documents for the environmental and climate movement. WikiLeaks is cited in more than 28 thousand academic papers and US court documents, which shows why WikiLeaks’ publications and its criminalisation as a whole are important for social movements: https://wikileaks.org/What-is-WikiLeaks.html.

Big corporations suppress coverage of their scandals with expensive lawsuits. A glaring example of the suppression of reporting by large corporations is the chemical waste scandal involving the oil company Trafigura: the company spread highly toxic chemical waste over a large area in Africa instead of disposing of it safely, which would have been more expensive. The chemical waste had devastating effects on people and the environment. The BBC had reported on the scandal but removed all reports from its website after a lawsuit by the corporation, as the legal battle could have cost £3 million.

Wikileaks has uploaded summaries of the case and the documents from the corporation’s lawsuit against the BBC to WikiLeaks, where they can still be read.

On 8 July from 7pm, DNL will be discussing this connection with Esteban Servat, climate activist and founder of EcoLeaks (a project inspired by WikiLeaks), following the screening of the documentary on the Assange case by director Clara López Rubio, who will be present for the talk.Tatiana Bazzichelli, Founder & Artistic Director of the Disruption Network Lab e.V., will moderate the discussion. The event is introduced by Raja Stutz & Claudia Daseking (Assange Support Berlin).
After the screening of the film Hacking Justice, there is a discussion about the work of EcoLeaks and why disclosures such as those made by WikiLeaks are relevant to the environmental movement.

Join Disruption Network Lab to celebrate the freedom of Julian Assange and keep up the fight for freedom of the press and information!

19:00-20:30: HACKING JUSTICE (Film Screening)
20:30-21:30: LEAKS FOR FUTURE (Talk)