Journalist and former political prisoner Julian Assange is now a free man, albeit at the cost of pleading guilty to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified documents from former Army security intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
But there are still a number of other political prisoners in the west, both in the US and abroad.
In my view, all of these people are unjustly imprisoned / persecuted for commmiting “crimes” that shouldn’t be crimes in the first place.
IMO, these people are the tall poppies. The government attacks them to a) put the fear of god into the public b) test their legal authority to roll out similar attacks on the public as a whole.
We must fight these attacks and make sure they fail or are reversed. Otherwise, states will continue to ratchet up their power until we live in a totalitarian nightmare.
You can help by:
a) learning about their plights (links in the spreadsheet)
b) publicize their cases
c) donating to their legal defense funds
d) writing them encouraging letters
e) donate to pro-liberty, pro-privacy NGO’s and lobbying organizations such as
P2P Rights Fund (#p2prights)
Free Samourai Defense Fund (#freesamourai)
f) write to your Congress person when pro-liberty, pro-privacy legislation comes up
I’ll be hosting some letter writing parties in the future—if you’d like to join, please sign up for this newsletter and you’ll receive a notice when the next one happens.
Know a political prisoner who should be on the list, but isn’t? Let me know in the comments here or in comments of the spreadsheet, and I’ll add them.
