Wikileaks founder
PEN Center appoints Julian Assange as an honorary member
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been made an honorary member of the German PEN center. Photo: Dominic Lipinski / PA Wire / dpa
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Whistleblower Julian Assange has been in a maximum security prison in London for more than two years. Now he is being honored by the German PEN Center.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been made an honorary member of the German PEN center. This was announced by the writers’ association, which advocates freedom of the word, on Tuesday in Darmstadt.
The appointment as an honorary member is linked to concerns about the health of Assange, whose detention conditions are described by Amnesty International as torture.
There is currently a legal dispute over a possible extradition of the Wikileaks founder to the USA. Assange has been held in a maximum security London prison for more than two years. He has already served a sentence for breaking bail conditions. There has been no further judgment so far.
The PEN Center Germany spoke of arbitrariness in justice. The deprivation of liberty in Assange is a monstrous violation of human rights that takes place in the midst of a Western European democracy and not in a despotic regime.
«We call on the competent authorities in England not to extradite our honorary member Julian Assange to the United States of America, where he faces up to 175 years in prison, but to release him immediately and unconditionally from prison. His continued detention is purely political and is therefore neither acceptable nor justified. It contradicts the right to freedom of expression and therefore the charter of the international PEN ”, explained Ralf Nestmeyer, Vice President and Writers-in-Prison Representative of the German PEN.
With the honorary membership, the PEN Center Germany wants to emphasize its demand for release, said Nestmeyer. PEN International could not award these memberships, so it was decided at the national level.
PEN stands for Poets, Essayists, Novelists. Last week the journalist and writer Deniz Yücel was elected as the new President of the PEN Center Germany.
Assange is accused of stealing and publishing secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. He put US informants in danger. His supporters see him as an investigative journalist who brought war crimes to light.