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Chelsea Manning is one of the most well known political prisoners of
our time, whose actions exposed war crimes, helped fuel the Arab
Spring uprisings and led to the US withdrawing most of its forces from
Iraq in 2011. The 28-year-old former Army intelligence analyst
disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks
in order to expose war crimes and human rights violations, give a
clearer picture of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to the public and
shed light on the way the United States conducts diplomacy around the
world. Manning is serving 35 years in jail, the longest sentence for a
whistleblower in US history, after being convicted on several counts
of the Espionage Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and military violations.
WikiLeaks’ first major release from Manning’s disclosures, on 5
April 2010, was Collateral Murder, a video depicting U.S. helicopter
gunners shooting Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, among them two Reuters
journalists and a van of people who’d stopped to help the initial victims.
Later in 2010, WikiLeaks released the Iraq and Afghanistan War
logs, comprising daily reports of casualties and other notable
incidents from both war zones. These diaries documented 15,000
previously uncounted killings of innocent civilians, American
complicity in torture, contractors’ abuses, among countless more revelations.
The Iraq logs undermined the Obama Administration's attempt to
keep troops in Iraq beyond 2011. Upon seeing the logs, Iraqi officials
declined to provide US troops the immunity they requested, troop talks
then broke down and the US was forced to leave.
In November 2010, WikiLeaks released 250,000 State Department
cables, ranging from unclassified to Secret, exposing, in Manning’s
words, “how the first world exploits the third.” With reports penned
by American officials from embassies around the world, the documents
gave new light to backroom dealings, detailing how the United States
interacts with its allies and adversaries behind closed doors. These
diplomatic releases, by exposing rampant corruption and abuse not only
by the United States but also by those it dealt with, helped fuel the
Arab Spring, the wave of grassroots uprisings that roiled North Africa
and the Middle East in the following years. Tunisian activists set up
'TuniLeaks' to highlight locally relevant disclosures and spread
awareness of the corruption of their government.
Finally, in April 2011, WikiLeaks released the Guantanamo Bay
Files, largely revealing that prisoners held there were known to not
pose a threat but were held instead due to their intelligence value.
Though separate from the larger caches, WikiLeaks also released
two CIA 'Red Cell' memos in 2010, 'CIA report into shoring up Afghan
war support in Western Europe' and 'Memorandum on United States
"exporting terrorism."' At her trial, Manning said,
"The content of two of these documents upset me greatly."
Manning was arrested on 27 May 2010 in Iraq and shipped to
Kuwait, where she endured brutal treatment in a metal cage, while
awaiting transfer to a military prison. She was brought to the
Quantico Marine Brig, where her abusive treatment, including forced
isolation and nudity, incurred international outrage, condemnation
from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, diplimatic protests and the
resignation of Hillary Clinton's spokesperson P.J. Crowley. Judge
Denise Lind ruled that her treatment was improper and awarded Manning
112 days off of her sentence.
Manning was precluded from defending her actions as a
whistleblower at trial, because the Espionage Act does not provide for
a public-interest defense — a conviction only requires the prosecution
to show the potential for harm. Manning plead guilty to some of the
counts against her and altered versions of some of the others, in part
in order to make the very public interest arguments that the legal
process had barred.
In her statement, Manning said,
“I felt that we were risking so much for people that seemed
unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and anger on
both sides. I began to become depressed with the situation that we
found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year. The [war logs]
documented this in great detail and provide a context of what we were
seeing on the ground.
…
"I believed that if the general public, especially the
American public, had access to the information contained within the
[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the
role of the military and our foreign policy in general as well as it
related to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
On 21 August 2013, Manning received the harshest conviction in
any whistleblower case in US history, 35 years in prison.
The day after her sentence, Manning, formerly Bradley, announced
her decision to live publicly as a woman, as Chelsea. Since then, she
has been embattled in a fight with the US Army for rights as a
transgender prisoner, including to medically necessary hormone
therapy.
Since her imprisonment, Manning has been a vocal member of the
global debate over war, secrecy and transparency, and transgender
rights. She has a column in the Guardian, blogs at Medium.com and
dictates tweets to be sent out at @xychelsea.
On 19 May 2016, Manning’s legal team formally filed its appeal
of her conviction, which it calls “perhaps the most unjust sentence in
the history of the military justice system” and suggests her sentence
be reduced to ten years.
The Courage Foundation has always supported Chelsea Manning’s
actions and fight for freedom and justice and is now officially making
her a beneficiary, so we can raise funds for her legal team throughout
Europe ahead of the appeal, which should come to a courtroom in 2017.
References:
https://www.chelseamanning.org/learn-more/what-did-wikileaks-reveal
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1931-the-wikileaks-files
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/wikileaks-the-unknown-prisoners-of-guantanamo/
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/press-releases/18/
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