 Julien Astage ist und wird ein großer Einfluss für die Gesellschaft und unsere Zeit sein. Teil des Bedeutens des Symbols unserer Zeit ist, der uns Informationen gab und uns den Raumschuh, in dem wir selbst sehen und denken können. Ich begrüße euch trotzdem jetzt einfach erst mal und stelle mich kurz vor. Ich bin Claudia Trapp, ich bin die Pressesprecherin von DiEM25 und zusammen mit der Courage Foundation organisieren wir seit 2019, im Mai 2019 haben wir, glaube ich, angefangen, europaweit Solidaritätsveranstaltungen wie diese heute zu veranstalten, um auf die prekäre Situation von whistleblown im Allgemeinen und die lebensgefährliche und schwierige spezielle Situation von Julien Astage, der auch Mitglied von DiEM25 ist, aufmerksam zu machen. Auf geht's zu dir, Esteban. Lass uns ein bisschen über deine Geschichte, wie die founding ECO-Leaks sind, und was war die Idee hinter, wie sie kommen und so weiter. Und warum bist du hier heute Abend? Hallo? Okay. Vielen Dank, everyone, for coming. It's an honor to be here, our first time in Leipzig. But we're not the only ones who came to Leipzig just for this. We just met someone who is here for the day also to be part of this action, of this exhibition. As I think she was saying because I don't speak German. I'm a scientist Argentinian. I was living in the US for 10 years working in the Silicon Valley. I was in the US when WikiLeaks leaked the biggest cables and war crimes from Afghanistan and so on. And this really impacted me. And I think everyone here will agree that what Assange has begun is really a revolution, a revolution of freedom of information, and probably has contributed more than anybody else in human history to this cause for democratizing information and holding the powerful accountable. So when I went back to Argentina to start an eco-village project, I bought a farm in a rural place that had a great history for environmental protection. And with my girlfriend here, Barbara, we were building a self-sustainable community beginning this project. And then the government brought fracking, which is a very destructive technique for extracting oil and gas. And I found out that they were already contaminating the water tables, the aquifers. With the first wells of fracking. And at the government some whistleblowers reached out to me that there was some irregularities already going on from the beginning. And there was a secret environmental impact study that the government was keeping secret because the results were really bad. They showed already this contamination. So they kept it secret from a public hearing where fracking was authorized to go on. And they were planning to substitute the results by fake ones that they were going to produce in a different lab in a university where the vice dean is at the same time a representative of the fracking company. The fracking company at the same time is owned by the biggest media group in the province. And it has very close links to all the politicians and the justice system, which is just a weaponized way of persecuting activists. So we were up against a lot of forces. I managed to get a copy of this report from a whistleblower. And really, you know, we thought the world needs an environmental version of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has a lot of fields. Also environmental stuff, but they are just overwhelmed and overly persecuted and attacked from every front. So we thought we should create something, an organization that we could use for leaking, for publishing information, documents that should be public, but have been censored or suppressed by governments or companies. So with other scientists and environmental activists and with a journalist from the US, Christopher Ketchum, who had also the same idea. He had proposed this in an article and I contacted him. We launched EcoLeaks to also do what Assange has said. Assange said, you know, when I'm no longer here or if I am put out of the way, everyone must become me. And I think the greatest legacy of Assange is this contagious courage, that if enough people begin to speak out and, you know, those of us that may have opportunities to access information that has been kept secret to make it public, the potential is huge and the biggest powers and biggest interest in the world can be brought down to their knees by a simple leak, like the cable gates of the US or the Afghan war crimes or so many other things that Wikileaks has published. So, of course, this was a very South American way of making an organization. We did not have the technical infrastructure of what Wikileaks has. We just needed to publish this report. So we built a very basic website and also a Facebook page because in that area Facebook is the biggest social media that people use and if you keep in mind that we were fighting all the media, the established media were the owners of the fracking company, the only chance we had to spread the word was trying to use social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp. So we published, we made these pages and we published the report and immediately the reaction of the government was to go out and all the big media on the official government websites on a non-working day on a Saturday because we published this on a Friday and then on a Saturday, the next day, the Saturday, all the official government pages and the biggest media of the province where they had the front page was to deny what we said. They said the results are in from fracking and it's all clean and it has not contaminated anything. But they began to make mistakes and we managed to get a couple of small radios to interview us and we used the audio file from the interview and shared on Facebook and WhatsApp and suddenly it became like a wildfire. This region where I am talking about is called Mendoza province. It's on the west side of Argentina, beautiful wine country area next to Chile and the reason I had moved there is 12 years ago they mobilized by the thousands to stop mega mining, mountain top mining, a very contaminating way of extracting gold and silver and other precious metals and this was really a mass movement by the people. So it's a desert where people have a very strong awareness of defending the little water they have. So I knew that if ever the water was threatened again, people would be ready to mobilize and so they did. So when they began to hear that fracking was contaminating the aquifers and that fracking was brought by the government, who 12 years ago the people that are now in government, they were activists and they used the water, the environmental cost to jump into government and once in government they betrayed everyone and brought fracking. So people were outraged and they were outraged that all of this was secret so a huge mass mobilization began to build up and thanks to a few interviews that we managed to get from small towns, people didn't know they were from small towns. They heard a scientist talking to a journalist and they believe that more than they believe a corrupt politician. So eventually became my word against the government and I had to put my face out behind this because otherwise nobody would believe that the report was serious because it was a few pictures of the technical data and they could be fake. So that's what the government was saying, they were fake. So I had to be there to counter the government to counters to what they were saying and eventually just insisting and insisting and the government began to make mistakes. Luckily we were fighting a very local government in countryside rural Argentina. This is not the most sad. They're not so elaborate, they're not so smart. So luckily for us, so they made a lot of mistakes. The different towns have different governments that they were sometimes contradicting each other or stepping over their own words or releasing too much information showing that they were lying. So eventually just persevering, we managed to get tens of thousands of people in every town and we did a demonstration in March with 15,000 people in our town that has only 30,000 inhabitants. So half of the population walking on the streets against fracking. But this also turned me into the target of all the government persecution because the justice system especially, well just like they are doing with Assange, they are using the justice system in a weaponized way to persecute and silence activists. So they wanted to make an example of those of us who were somewhat leading the way or being the most annoying against the government. So I got so many criminal cases against me, the most of anyone in Argentina for fighting fracking. Well, that's a long story. We did a lot, it was a very intense year 2018. The government put some people in jail as well, they threatened us, our lives. And then they managed for the movement to begin to die off because of so much persecution. The government managed to approve a code of conduct that is very similar to the one we had in the dictatorship days in the 70s. And so the Mendoza government could put you in jail if you call for a demonstration. Or if you insult a public official on social media or if they consider that you insulted them, they can put you in jail or give you a big fine. So people, and this was a time of economic crisis during Macri administration in Argentina. And people were already struggling to eat, to pay for their bills, to afford education which they wanted to privatize, medicine which they wanted to privatize. So suddenly we had so many other battlefronts that the environmental front just became weaker and weaker and weaker. And then the government advanced even more. Some people had to leave the province. And in early 2019, the death threats against us intensified. And we decided to come to Germany where we have been for the last year and a few months. And well, but all of this would not have happened. All of this echoleaks story and so on would not be possible without Assange. And the reason I'm here is not to talk about me, but to say that this man has started something so important that our little example is just one more of so many thousands of cases that can arise from his inspiration and his example and that hopefully we can also do more than talking to help him. And today I was talking before coming here with people who joined the vigilance, the vigil for Assange in Leipzig and in Berlin. There is a weekly group. And we were saying maybe in September there is a big date for the extradition trial and so on. Maybe we can organize a demo in front of the UK Embassy in Berlin or in Leipzig in the consulate. I think we should target the UK and not the US right now because it's the UK authorities that will decide what happens. It's the UK judges. So maybe some of them said they were willing to come to Berlin because we could unite forces there. Why don't we just block the UK Embassy with civil disobedience, peaceful action. Since we arrived in Germany and Europe, we're also doing a lot of environmental work with Extinction Rebellion and so on. Because it turns out that all of this fracking that happens in Argentina is being done by European companies, including Winterschall from Germany, which owns thousands of hectares of land to frack us, killing indigenous communities, displacing entire indigenous groups, persecuting activists. Children are dying of leukemia because of fracking at a rate that in some towns is the triple of the national average because of the contamination. So this is colonialism, European colonialism of the 21st century and not only are the companies fracking us, but the products are being consumed by Europeans. They ship the gas back here and Germany is building three terminals in the north to expand the import of frack gas which science has shown that is worse than coal for the planet. The carbon footprint of frack gas is worse than coal for the planet and yet Germany is building three terminals in the north. But I don't want to derail what I was saying. We've been doing a lot of civil disobedience blockades and stuff like that. And I think why don't we do this for Assange? Why don't we maybe organize in Berlin and do a blockade peacefully, not breaking any law, just locking arms or something, trying to have some media impact and maybe make a little bit of a difference. If anyone is willing, you can give them my number and we can organize. Thank you very much. Thank you all for coming to this event and thank you for the support for this cause and for Julian Assange. As I've said before, Julian Assange is fighting for his life but at the same time he is fighting for press freedom and that concerns us all. So it's very important that we rally behind him in the months ahead because it's going to be a difficult fight. Julian has been in Belmars prison now for almost a year and a half under very bad circumstances because of Covid he has been in isolation spending almost 24 hours a day in his cell. He hasn't had visitors, his family or his friends in six months and his lawyers have not been able to see him in prison. They have only contact with him through telephone with his, of course, very limited. Belmars prison has not made it easy for Julian Assange. They have, it seems, tried to make things as difficult as possible. Only a few weeks ago he finally got a computer to review the material that is essential for him to see and review before his case is continued next month in courts in London. But Belmars made sure that he couldn't use that computer to take notes by actually gluing down the keys on the keyboard of the computer. His health has deteriorated which is, of course, naturally normal under these circumstances and no person will come unharmed for such a period of isolation in a maximum security prison. His case will be continued in the court in London a month from now on September 7th in Old Bailey in central London and it's very important that people will follow carefully the proceedings there and raise attention to what is at stake there. The US administration, the Trump administration has shown utter disregard for the UK courts in the way they continue in their case. For example in June they totally changed tune in a so-called superseding indictment against Julian. It contained the same 18 counts in the indictment but the narrative was completely changed. Now of course his lawyers tried to protest this in court but they were stopped by the judge for the simple reason that this document this superseding indictment had not been presented to the court in London. That shows the disrespect for the proceedings in the UK and it highlights in my mind the utter political nature of this persecution against Julian Assange. Let me ask you to try your utmost to raise attention to this issue and to raise awareness of what is at stake here basically the future of press freedom. Please follow courage please follow the websites where you can read more about the essence of the case the don'textra.assange.com in the UK and please make sure that the press is aware of this and covers this very important trial. This hearing in London where Julian is fighting against this extradition may be one of the most important case in court this year and maybe this decade. Thank you. Well the moment I started this I lost all contact with that world and I never cared to get it back. No. I don't think they would support it I think they would be extremely scared and also to protect the friends I have left from that world from the biotech multinational companies so I have very few friends there I never liked that world anyways and also I also didn't want to contact them just for their own safety I felt I was getting into such to me it was like suicide anything could happen so I didn't want to bring with me people that unless they really wanted to jump on the boat and I didn't expect that they would care they don't it's the US that's another story but completely dehumanized the Silicon Valley as much as people have a great idea of it is quite repugnant there's no life, there's no culture there is no humanity it's just robotics places don't have sidewalks to walk on but anyways we can talk about the US some other time you said LNG the gas so I came to Germany as an Italian citizen so I did not bother to do any paperwork I can be here and it's true what you said the German government is supporting and pushing the frag gas only are they doing that but they are sending their companies to frag Argentina and not only that they are sending a foundation now to brainwash the locals that they shouldn't hate fracking agriculture and fracking can coexist something insane because Germany has banned fracking they have a moratorium until next year it's coming up for debate again but they are sending foundations fracking is good so it's really cynical, really sad and even the Greens voted in favor of this frag gas import in the Bundesrat last year which by the way is being financed with your money 150 million euros of public money and maybe more in the future so it's just insane yeah well I think that's why things like the M25 are emerging alternative parties that are not corrupted by the established politics I don't know and you know what most of the media don't want to say anything about this the Bundesrat vote was quite secret like nobody really knew we had just arrived in Berlin a week or a few weeks before and by chance we found out and most of the environmental movements did not know this was happening and you have thousands of people against coal which is fantastic but this issue is not smaller than coal is even bigger because fracking has been shown to be a leading cause of accelerating climate change it's responsible for more than 50% of all increased global emissions of methane over the last 10 years in the world so it's a huge issue totally under reported because there's so much power behind and Trump actually this is Trump's energy dominance strategy he says American energy dominance they will achieve this with fracking it allowed the US to become a superpower of energy they are now the leading exporter of gas because of fracking and by 2035 they will provide more than half of the world's gas for that they need Europe to consume more and more of this LNG Terminals which Germany is just one country but all of Europe is going in that direction and the media don't say anything so sharing on your social media would be a great way and if you have contacts with environmental movements in Leipzig tell them maybe plant some seeds maybe then we can grow that fight even more but that is hard without the media saying your word and I start from the end what you just said at the end a lot of the environmental destruction of the world is happening due to these environmental crimes that go completely unreported and due to corruption of politicians also they don't care to regulate or control them so that's why also and now we're trying to build the proper technological infrastructure so if there's any programmers who may be interested in helping we can talk the other thing you said Facebook censored us but it was the only thing we had so we didn't have an option to do much other than to denounce the censorship in Facebook but for example what they did was we built a Facebook group for the anti-fracking fight against fracking 56.000 members this was so dangerous to the government they had it open on their computers all day watching what we were posting and following up at some time Facebook removed like 14.000 members arbitrarily without notice without telling you who they were so that you could reach out to them to get them back under fake excuses so they have done things like this to limit our capacity of spreading the news or sometimes what you post in this group is not visible to the members somehow or if you share this outside the group then people could not see the publication because it only says if you shared a statement it wouldn't show the publication especially when it was something hot like something I was getting off like that and of course they blocked my account several times and stuff like this happening but even then this is the only thing that at least in Mendoza, the only social media people don't use Twitter so much or Instagram which is also on by Facebook anyways but in Mendoza this was the big tool that we had but I also have no doubt that they will keep you know more and more when we began it was very different than what Facebook is now and soon after we began they for example stopped they made some changes that really limited the capacity of the stuff to spread and I think it's just gonna get more and they getting smarter and smarter so sometimes we had the support of 350.org and they would finance they would promote some posts in the whole country and this was very important and soon after that Facebook stopped allowing you to promote a post if you were sharing from us or sharing from anybody and then they would never approve a post that had the word fracking on it so if you wanted to promote it they already said no it's against our policies they don't tell you what it is but it's just against the policies and it's broadly and there's nothing you can do that's the evil and I don't think this will be a tool for very long because they are now closing in on all these things so they really can be selective on what they allow to become viral and stuff like this Falls niemand was hat hätte ich noch eine Frage I would like to ask you something because as a press and media person I'm very interested in knowing did you contact the press by yourself when you got the leak wasn't it option for you I mean like Edward Snowden did it he was thinking about going to WikiLeaks he was thinking about doing whatever and he said so nobody would believe what I'm saying he had that unbelievable so I need to find people who are having an interest and so he went to the Guardian and the Washington Post and they were like I'll get them on the phone and to respond them and to meet them so that's my question did you try to do that so you know they came to me the next day and against us because as I said they own the biggest media monopoly in Mendoza they own the fracking company but I did reach out to the local media in the town near which we live and because this town has such a strong environmental history that everyone mobilizes so the local media even the government is there because they said they defend the water so the local media are the most likely place to go that they would listen to us and they did and this is where we got two radio interviews which they were brave enough to make because they were also threatened after that one of the journalists never again told me she never I think she even blocked me on WhatsApp just to be safe and the other one is okay but he's brave and then all the media attention came to us and something funny happened you know what really allowed this to become mainstream there was there's a big media monopoly that is owning the company but there's also another media monopoly that sometimes have competing interests and those guys called me and they called me for an interview for the biggest newspaper in Mendoza like a week after or two of the report and they did something very important so he interviewed me in an objective way but then on his own this journalist contacted the laboratory where the samples were analyzed where this study was from so he confirmed with the head of the laboratory that this report was coming from there that the signature was true they could not tell him what the samples were because it's blind right it's double blind so you only know the sample number one two three ABC but you don't know if it's a fracking sample but this confirmed this legitimized everything in the biggest media group probably they were trying to get something from the government ruin the economic interest of the other competing monopoly but for us it was great because after this everyone really believed that okay this is very serious this is not fake and the government had been saying their biggest strategy was this is fake this images are photoshop and it's all lies and the biggest group was telling you the lab confirmed this is real so this is when they began to to collapse their story began to collapse yeah interesting because I find very much often that the media is really difficult to catch with the topic Julian Assange it has also other reasons of course but to just think about the idea of releasing such leaks were very important for the civilization for the people out there they need to know all these things and how is it not in the interest of media they say he's not a journalist so they are not journalists they are just employees making a salary and caring for themselves and they don't want to take any risk yeah it's really strange but it's sad to be honest hat noch irgendjemand eine Frage ansonsten können wir natürlich auch bitte yeah it's the age of fake news Bolsonaro, Trump and more coming right but on the other side we need media and press otherwise we stuck in social media and then we are dead so we have to force them to be honest I think and to keep our free press this is because I'm working on this media thingy since 20 years now and I see the problems because good journalists don't get paid enough they get thrown out many of them I know are freelancers now and they are really struggling and we have to take care of them and because we need this kind of press otherwise and more than them we need WikiLeaks and we need Assange and the fate of Assange will seal the fate of journalism in the world because if they extradite him and they execute him in the US nobody ever will dare to leak anything that will make the powerful angry and if he was on the other hand free it will be emboldening to freedom activists freedom of information everywhere to multiply and sprout that's why they can't allow this to happen that's why we need to make it happen