REGGIO EMILIA – The Reggio City Council has approved the resolution conferring honorary citizenship on Julian Assange, Australian journalist and activist, co-founder of the disclosure organization WikiLeaks, for his commitment to defending the right to freedom of the press and expression.
Twenty votes in favor (Pd, Reggio E’, M5S, Civic Coalition, Green Europe), 7 against (Lega – Salvini prime minister, Forza Italia, Fratelli d’Italia) and 3 abstentions (+Europa, Alleanza civica and Ferrari Pd ). The resolution was prepared following a popular initiative motion.
“Julian Assange – we read in the motivation, illustrated by the President of the City Council Matteo Iori – is an international symbol of the right to freedom of the press and expression. Thanks to the WikiLeaks investigative journalism project, it has made public to international public opinion several episodes in which human rights have been violated, war crimes committed and international agreements have been disregarded.”
“The Assange affair concerns first and foremost a theme of freedom – underlined the mayor Luca Vecchi in the Chamber – that is, a founding value of all the Constitutions born from the rubble of the Second World War. Freedom is a principle that must be constantly valued and must be protected, because free information is directly correlated with the quality of democracy. The city of Reggio Emilia also has a great peculiarity: that of always being actively positioned on Human Rights, even in an avant-garde way. Committing to human rights means having a cutting-edge vision of the community.”
“In February 2023 the Free Assange Reggio Emilia Movement delivered over 1,200 signatures of Reggio Emilia people with a clear objective: to give support to the journalist Julian Assange by honoring him with the honorary citizenship of the city of Reggio Emilia, the city where the Tricolore, our national flag, was born. From the beginning with Coalition Civica we supported the proposal by collecting signatures, my colleague Fabrizio Aguzzoli endorsed all the forms”, comments Dari De Lucia satisfied, with a special thanks to the activists Elviera Meglioli and Marga Venturi of the committee for their commitment .
Julian Assange, born Julian Paul Hawkins, is an Australian journalist and activist, editor-in-chief of the disclosure organization WikiLeaks. Since 2010 he has been at the center of public interest for revealing classified US documents. The investigations carried out earned Assange international recognition and honours; he has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 11 April 2019 he has been imprisoned in the United Kingdom, first for charges dismissed within a few months, then in relation to an extradition request from the United States of America relating to charges of conspiracy and espionage. The extradition request, followed by various appeals for Assange’s release, had mixed results. The extradition, initially rejected by the British judicial system, was instead granted in December 2021 with a ruling from the High Court in London. The appeals presented by Assange’s lawyers have so far all been rejected and the journalist, currently detained in a maximum security prison in the United Kingdom, awaits the outcome of a further appeal presented by his lawyers.
