Am 25.März 2020 schrieb IALANA einen Unterstützerbrief an Chelsea Manning, Whistelblowerpreisträgerin im Jahr 2011 nun erneut in Haft, um Aussagen gegen Julian Assange zu erzwingen
In December 2011, our organization – together with the „Federation of German Scientists (VDW) – presented you with the Whistleblower Award. Since then we have been following your fate with interest and empathy.
From the beginning, it was clear that the shock, that your revelations caused in the world, spread through the Wikileaks platform, would cause the denounced perpetrators to search for and plug the leak. And above all, to prevent something like this from happening again. To this day, we have witnessed how whistleblowers from the US security sector are systematically prosecuted with relentless harshness and draconian punishments in order to deter others from whistleblowing, who for reasons of conscience, do not wish to remain silent about war crimes. It is not enough for the USA to lock up the whistleblowers, they got their hands on. Through unbelievably traumatic prison conditions they try to break the person and their soul, to destroy them socially. Nils Melzer, the UNHCR representative, rightly sees this as a reason to talk about torture.
You have experienced and suffered all this in the long and torturous solitary confinement at Quantico. The criminal proceedings against you before the military court were in many respects only frightening for our Western European legal understanding: non-transparent, largely beyond the control of the public and the press, accused under the Espionage Act – as if leaking and spying were the same thing. In addition the massive obstruction of the defence and finally sentenced to an exorbitant prison term.
We then worried whether Obama would at least pardon you in the last months of his presidency, and we were glad when you were finally released. We admired how you then resumed your life unbroken.
hier der Brief als pdf