Torture of Julian Assange by Australian governments sends powerful message to whistleblowers

Julian Assange has set a number of firsts for Australia, including:

• The first Walkley award winner whose journalism has attracted a possible 175 years in US prison.
• The first journalist to be prosecuted as a spy by the US government, under its 1917 Espionage Act.
• The first citizen of an ostensibly democratic state (Australia) whom a UN official has found to be the target of a campaign of collective persecution and mobbing by other so-called democratic states.

As the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, observed:

In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and…