 Okay, hello. Can you hear me well? I can hear you. Okay, wonderful. I know you're very short on time, so that's why we will not start with Laudasia from me, from me to the price, the Weizmann Award for Peace and Social Responsibility, but you will have the time now. And we will do... Yeah, I will do the speech afterwards. So, if that's fine for you. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you for accommodating me. It's just that I have to get to the airport to get a plane. Yeah, sure. I don't have... So the stage is yours, and thanks for being here live and in... Yeah, live here. Thanks. Thank you. And I'd like to thank you for awarding and recognizing Julian for his role as a pioneer and for really bringing a revolutionary approach to bringing accountability. And it might be a good idea to think back about when Wikileaks appeared on the stage, which was in the early 2000s. And it grew out of a period in which there was an intention by civil society to make government transparent and accountable. And these are terms that we no longer use very much, transparency and government accountability. It kind of fallen out of vogue with the times. And Wikileaks, as you know, was one of several projects at the time to bring greater accountability as government and the world basically moved onto the internet. And Wikileaks did it in the most successful way, perhaps. I mean, there was also the Freedom of Information Act legislation was enacted during this time. But Julian combined his knowledge of how the internet actually worked with the purpose of true investigative journalism. And he understood that the traditional newsrooms were completely clueless about how communications on the net were able to unmask sources in a way that traditional journalism didn't have to deal with. They had the traditional ways of protecting sources, but they had no idea about how to protect sources in the age of emails that were not encrypted and so on. And so Julian brought his knowledge of cryptography and understanding of communications on the internet and the architecture of the internet and so on into journalism and made an enormous contribution, not just to how journalism was done, but also to bringing the full potential of information as a tool for accountability. And with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the way they had been reported by then was through embedded journalists who really just gave a completely impoverished and biased understanding of what was going on. And so when Wikileaks published the Afghan war logs in the Iraq war diaries, they really were able to give an anatomy, a kind of, yeah, really map out the war in all its destruction, not just when there had been a suicide bomb somewhere in Baghdad, but even individual killings that added up to 15,000 civilian deaths that had been unaccounted for until that point. And the incredible carnage that those wars met on the ground. And this really changed, enabled also the way that the newsrooms were reporting about the war, gave them really something to dig their teeth into and to change the way those wars were talked about. And Julian has also had the incredible gift of being able to understand things at scale. So one of Julian's most famous quotes now that has been doing the rounds on Twitter and so on is a comment that he made about the Afghan war, that the goal is not a successful war, but the goal is to have an endless war through which the tax bases of the UK and the US and European countries who are participating in these wars to go into the pockets of the arms manufacturers and the war profiteers. And this really has resonated these days, this day today how people have started to understand the drivers of war. And similarly, by exposing those wars, WikiLeaks has been a driver for peace. A driver by exposing the war crimes, exposing the true face of war, which is hell, which is suffered by those who are killed and who are maimed. And in many cases, their killing and the harm that comes to them is never reported on or is never known. And so it has no consequence. And for those victims of war, the only thing that approximates some form of justice is the right to truth. And the right to truth is in this day and age, perhaps, I think everyone's extremely sensitive to the importance of the right to truth, both for the victims and also for the public in general, because countries need buy-in by the public. The public has to be, as Julian says, lied into war because they usually don't like war. And so that's why WikiLeaks has been so important and needs to remain. It's important needs to be recognized ongoingly because what is being done to Julian is just, it can't be allowed to continue because he is being in this fight between accountability and impunity. Through Julian's prosecution, impunity is ahead and Julian's freedom will be a victory for accountability, for the right to truth, for the public's right to know, and ultimately for democracy. So in this context, it's incredibly, I mean incredibly thankful for this recognition because Julian has been attacked in so many ways and the recognition of what has been his life's work, which is to fight for victims and give the world the tools to have accountability. Now what the world does with it, the public does with it, the newsrooms do with it, is a different issue. But he is able to put on the public record the reality of not just of war, but of the subversion of judicial processes in Germany, for example, in relation to the ill-mousry case in Italy similarly when Italy attempted to extradite CIA agents who had conducted a rendition from Italy and in Spain where they were investigating attempting to bring to trial the US agents who were responsible, the US military personnel who were responsible for killing, deliberately killing, Jose Coso, a Spanish cameraman who was killed in Hotel Baghdad by US troops and they were aiming right at him and the US used its political leverage in order to interfere with that process. European attempts to bring accountability within the European space, within the EU to where the facts were known and there was political interference and this was laid to light by Wikileaks publications. And just one last point, Julian's freedom matters to Europe, not just on principle, not just for us who support truth and democracy and want peace in the world, but also because this is an attack on European, the Europeans right to know, on European press freedom and Julian will fight this till the end, he will fight this until it gets to the European Court of Human Rights and this case will create, the jurisprudence will shape the scope of press freedom, of the right to know, of the right to truth within the European space. So I'd like to thank you all, I'm sorry this is a bit rushed, but I'm very appreciative and Julian is thrilled as well because he remembers you from years ago and he hopes to be able to come and address you himself before too long. Thank you very much Stella, for taking the time, I think none of us can imagine under which pressure and stress you are so that's why we just relieve you. Thanks for taking the time again and we'll get the recording of my speech later to you if you're interested. Okay, then goodbye to you and bye bye, thank you. Okay, really nice. Okay, okay session. Okay, then we just continue the reverse way. I will now have the award speech, we have the award here and we will try to get it towards to him. Here I'll just put it here so it's visible now and let me now say a few words why and how we as fifth decided to award Julian Assange. It is a story of bravery, technology and torture. So I'm standing here having to honor to represent the fifth, the forum computer scientists for peace and societal responsibility. As you all might know founded in 1984 by a group of people including for example Christiana Floyd working on software design focusing on users, tech not only for tech people and with the needs of users focused, but also Joseph Weizenbaum criticizing wrong assumptions about technology. For example, demystifying AI and the automation of humans. He said the danger is not so much that computers become more like humans, but that humans become more like computers. And that's why we have the Weizenbaum award for peace and societal responsibility. He was an outspoken anti-militarist. He published texts that people are working in tech should refuse to build military tech and every single person should refuse individually. He publicly refused himself to work on electronic weaponry parts during the Vietnam War. He said we as tech people have a responsibility because we know technology, we understand it. And he said we all need to have the courage and he had the courage with many others in the streets then to oppose the official narrative that war is necessary. He said once he wrote one of the great misconceptions is that a single person cannot make a difference and believing this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why we founded the Weizenbaum award for peace and societal responsibility for people who fight for a peaceful world or for world peace as the UN calls it. For people who refuse to use their tech skills for war and its means, for people who use their tech skills for peace and peaceful means. For people who take the responsibility for their actions and their tech knowledge and they don't blindly blindly or conveniently follow any official narrative. It's for people who do bravely make a difference and break with the self-fulfilling prophecy. This year we want to honor Julian Assange with the Weizenbaum award for peace and societal responsibility, for his bravery fighting for global justice and state and governmental accountability, and against war crimes, against state lies, against power misconduct and the use of torture. For his creative use of technology helping to invent a new kind of investigative journalism, as we heard from Stella before, for co-founding WikiLeaks and continuously holding up journalistic standards and for his merits and endurance. But what exactly did Julian Assange do? Well, he initiated and co-founded WikiLeaks in 2006, a new investigative media organization. It was possible there to anonymously upload leaks, documents, videos, anything. For example, documenting governmental power misuses. It used technically the Tor anonymity network and the idea was to reduce the immense power asymmetry between individuals and groups and on the one hand, and governmental actors on the other hand. Especially global powers like the US often involved in or starting wars, as we heard this was one of the motivations. So, as Julian Assange said himself, WikiLeaks is the reaction to rampant growth of state secrecy. How did they do it? They checked for public revelance of the documents provided, applied a harm minimization policy that means to warn people mentioned, which is a controversial method, and then the timely publishing of the information. In the year 2009, there were already over one million documents available on WikiLeaks, which led to the website quickly being blocked in China, North Korea, Israel, Russia or Turkey. Let's get a little bit into detail what happened there by showing the nature and the examples of those documents that could be found there. In 2010 was the example of the collateral murder video that Stella was referring to. The killing of journalists in Baghdad, Iraq by US forces. It was an illegal war based on false information produced by US torture, it has to be mentioned, and this incident was denied until the date of the release of the video. So, the video was uncovering war crimes denied, explicitly denied by the US before. Then we had the Afghan war diaries in 2010 showing the real situation on the ground, uncovering a lot of governmental lies and showing the real picture of the war. The Iraqi war logs in 2010 uncovering the knowledge of grave torture and Iraqi security forces after Hussein was defeated, which was also denied by the US, that there was grossed grave torture. Then we had the cable gate in 2011 and maybe for Germans here, interesting, we have the secret toll collect contracts also perceived via WikiLeaks. There was also some information about the NSA, the Spanish in 2015 on WikiLeaks, showing that the German chancellor was being surveilled starting in the 1990s, but also France, Brazil, Japan and also Japanese companies. And in 2017 via WikiLeaks we all got to know about the US Senate torture report of the CIA, which was highly redacted only publicly available, but then all the over 7,000 pages became public. It didn't matter that they renamed the torture extended interrogation techniques, it was grave torture, there were black sites, rendition flights and cooperation of UK and also being made possible by the ignorance of other countries. There were black sites in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo. WikiLeaks was the source for many media outlets like New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, Spiegel online and the BIJ, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The question is, you can pay attention, how do they position themselves right now when Julian Assange is on the line directly? The results, well, no one was ever officially charged by the publications of WikiLeaks, for example, exposing torture by US forces. Not the war crimes, not for the torture, not for the lies, not for the warmongering, not for the inaction facing all the injustice, but now we know, as Snowden likes to put it. Everyone can browse the documents, they're still online and they will be for a long time and Assange is a great example for investigative journalism, press freedom and government critical work. Assange is, on the other way, a horrible example in the eyes of the USA if he can continue. So, what happened to him after he started this project? Well, in November 2010, Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange over allegations of sexual misconduct. They were provenly manipulated documents in this case, arbitrary and changing requirements, how the process should continue, online or not online, where and where not. And after Niels Mälzer, the UN rapporteur of torture at that time, inquired more details that was not even an answer from the Swedish government. And the charges, by the way, were later dropped. Assange was facing extradition to Sweden at the time and from there to the US. He took refuge in the embassy of Ecuador in London 2012 and was subject to bullying, bullying, isolation, and as we now know, even spying. So, the lawyer's secrecy, really important in case of courts, was not given at any point of time. In 2013, we know now Sweden wanted to drop the charges, but the UK pressed it not to do it and to keep all the charges up. And while in the US, there was a big discussion about the possible assassination of Assange. In 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn and he was brought into UK prison. Surprisingly, exactly when Sweden dropped the charges. Well, they said not much is against him due to the long time passed. There was a comment that the charges who kept him immediate from the beginning, from travelling freely. Well, and right now, what's the situation? The US now is demanding extradition of Assange from UK based on the Espionage Act of 2017. The Espionage Act will be negotiated before a military secret court with no possibility to defend oneself. He will be, he's facing 175 years in prison and in US prison as we know, the country who connected many black sites and invented the term advanced interrogation techniques. Well, now he's in Belmarsh prison and the reason is a bail escape. So, he didn't pay the bail, which has never happened before as a reason for getting into a high emergency prison or high security prison. The extradition is basically granted, but it's still in revision, so the future is still open. But no longer he's able to communicate with his lawyers, it's still a court case, and there's no fair trial and all independent observers say this. He's in solitary confinement and he's getting psychologically and physically weaker. The whole process is torture, says Niels Meltzer, the UN rapporteur for torture. But what is torture? Torture is a cruel, inhumane, undignified treatment with a goal to break a person, to get information or just to make a public example. Here it is clearly the case that there should be an example being made to all journalists and leakers for that matter, don't mess with the empire is the message. This cannot reach Snowden, less so right now, so Assange gets all the wrath. Well, at the same time, Sweden and the UK actively help the US and other European countries watch quietly, which is outrageous from our point of view. What's happening right now has an effect on three levels. First, Julian Assange as a person individually. Torture effects become more and more serious and there is a very realistic risk of suicide, as doctors said, when they have the chance to visit him. Second, press freedom, political freedom and the idea of a constitutional state with a fair trial gets kicked in the trash. Such freedoms and principles are precisely necessary for this case against state power. Otherwise there's no use of such rights. If they don't apply when they are necessary, they are useless and hollow talk. Third, the weight of the Western values in general. Well, of course we already see Russia, China, North Korea and so on to say, well, we imprison our journalists just like you do. Well, and they are essentially correct. To conclude, Julian Assange always knew this could happen and he still pushed his agenda of transparency, peace, justice, accountability and responsibility of those in power. Therefore we combined the award ceremony with the following demands. To the UK we say, free Assange immediately. To Germany we say, take a stance and offer unlimited asylum. To the EU we say, act on our values. This is the time to show they actually have any value. And to all of you we say thank you that you are here. And to Stella we say thank you. And to Julian Assange we say also thank you for doing what you did. So we are very honored that the award will be received later on and then Stella was here. And the last thing that's up to me to say is that as long we are all active and we pay attention to what's happening and we keep what's happening there alive in a discussion in the media, there might be a slight chance of Julian getting out of this alive. Thanks a lot.