Contact:
Gerry Condon 206-499-1220
Anton Black 206-235-3682
Devin
McDonnell 425-773-1089
Supporters of Bradley Manning to Protest
Prison Sentence
5 pm, Westlake Park, Seattle on Wednesday, August 21
Supporters of Army whistle-blower Pfc.
Bradley Manning will rally in downtown Seattle on Wednesday, the day of his sentencing by a military judge at Fort Meade,
Maryland. Judge Col. Denise Lind has
announced that she will read his sentence on Wednesday, probably in the
morning. The 5 pm rally at Westlake Park, 4th & Pine in downtown
Seattle, is being organized by Greater Seattle Veterans For Peace. It will be followed by a march to Capitol
Hill.
While a 22-year-old intelligence
analyst stationed in Iraq in 2009-10, Pfc. Manning witnessed
war crimes, rampant corruption, and covert abuse. He exposed what he saw by releasing hundreds
of thousands of classified military and diplomatic files to the transparency
website WikiLeaks.
Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize three years in a row. Last week more than 100,000 signatures in support
of his 2013 nomination were delivered to the Nobel committee in Norway.
The US Army has held Bradley Manning
in prison for over three years prior to his court martial, including over nine months in solitary confinement. The abusive conditions of his confinement
have been condemned by Amnesty International and the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on Torture.
This week Army prosecutors asked the
military judge, Col. Denise Lind, to sentence Pfc. Manning to 60 years in
prison. Col. Lind has found
Manning to be guilty of 20 of the 22 counts with which he was charged,
including violations of the 1917 Espionage Act.
“Bradley Manning stands convicted of
doing his duty under the plain wording of international law: to report war crimes that he had knowledge of,” said Anton Black,
Bradley Manning Support Coordinator for Veterans For Peace #92 in Seattle. “His chain of command refused to investigate
the 'war porn' contained in records they possessed when he pointed this out.”
In early 2010, Manning gave Wikileaks
a copy of an Army video that showed US soldiers gunning
down unarmed civilians in Baghdad from an Apache helicopter. The video, dubbed “Collateral Murder” by
Wikileaks, has been viewed millions of times on YouTube.
“The U.S.
government has a proven track record of not reporting or prosecuting war crimes it orders and its forces carry out,” said Anton Black of Veterans
For Peace. “Cover-up and minimal
prosecution after being reported by whistle blowers is the norm. No one
has been prosecuted for officially ordered torture. The fact that the
invasion of Iraq was based upon bald-faced lies and is therefor illegal has
never been officially addressed. No one has been prosecuted for the
crimes Bradley revealed. Instead, the
whistle-blower is being prosecuted.”
"This has not
been a trial - this has been a witch hunt,” said Devin
McDonnell, a young Seattle activist. “I
am outraged that the Army wants to put someone in prison for 60 years for
obeying their own code of conduct and reporting war crimes. We must stand up for Bradley Manning, for
freedom of the press, and for the value of what he did for the world by showing
us the truth."
Gerry Condon, a
member of the national Board of Directors of Veterans For Peace who attended
Bradley Manning's court martial, will speak at the 5 pm rally at Westlake
Park. “The government wants to know
everything about us – they have stolen our privacy,” said Condon. “But they don't want us to know what they are
doing in our name and with our tax dollars.
Bradley Manning should be freed immediately.”
The Bradley Manning
Support Network is calling for President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment