Category: Helsinki

I led my first ever protest in Helsinki on Julian’s 48th birthday. Like most everywhere the media in Finland had been silent on his torture and imprisonment at Belmarsh. So I wrote to the entire Finnish media sending them links to about a dozen factual articles which gave a comprehensive overview of his case. I asked them to report on the torture of Assange which they did. In fact, they continued to follow Assange’s case and report on it thereafter.

I wrote to the Finnish government but they weren’t interested in Press Freedom. Later the PM was tossed out over corruption by the Finnish people and Sanna Marine stepped in as the new PM. She is a known human rights defender so I recommend pro-Assange activists write to her and ask her to defend him.

I wrote letters to Assange and did my best to feed him hope. I learned from the Palestinian people how important hope is and how it can literally save your life during the most extreme situations such as war. Having worked with Palestinian media and in the field of Holistic Health, I knew the importance of Direct Support.

After my 5th letter to Assange I received a response. I reminded him that I am the woman from The Liberty Beacon (TLB) Project. I told him how I was also targeted for exposing government war crimes. You can read my story here. I also told Assange my websites were cracked by Israeli Zionist terrorists and how years of my work was wiped.

I wrote to WikiLeaks and included my CV, references and other documents which prove my credibility and offered my services to them. I also wrote to Assange and offered my services to him. I asked Assange if there’s any message he would like me to deliver to the world for him.

On August 14th I received his letter. From behind prison walls he had reached out and touched my life.

The first thing I noticed from Julian’s writing is that he has a poetic mind. His letter was a riddle with profound meaning with a message to us all.

It’s difficult to explain what it feels like to be contacted by a visionary such as Assange. He is someone who has changed the very fabric of the universe and affected the course of our future with the WikiLeaks revelations. It’s a precious gift beyond measure.

I felt deeply touched that he remembered me and trusted in my abilities to defend him. I was told by The Liberty Beacon founder Roger Landry back in 2017, that Assange was following our work. His letter confirmed that it was true. I was not planning to publish it but people had not heard from Assange in months. Christopher Green from AMTV and other concerned grass roots supporters were beginning to question if the British establishment had tortured him to death. So I made a tweet letting people know I received a letter from him.

Suzie Dawson was nervous and told me in an email that there have been women in the past who were obsessed with Assange. So I assured her that while I feel an unconditional gratitude for him my intentions are purely professional. She accepted it but warned me not to “gush” too much.

I showed the letter to Unity4J for vetting before I published it. Then on August 16, Courage Foundation @couragefound published an update to Twitter, including my letter. They also published an update of Assange’s letter to me to defendwikileaks.org website on “August 16”. See: twitter.com/couragefound/status/. The impact of Assange’s letter was a massive wave of relief which put a great many people at ease.

The last thing Assange told his friend @YourMarkLubbers just before his communication was severed at the embassy in 2018, was to “trust nobody but my legal team”.

In July 2018, some lawyer friends helped us save a village in the West Bank from demolition and Forcible Transfer by getting the International Criminal Court (ICC) to intervene. The lawyers told me they will help Assange too and instructed me to tell his legal team to file immediately with the ICC.

I wrote to WikiLeaks informing them of this great news and provided proof. In August I tweeted Jennifer Robinson for all to see, urging Assange’s legal team to file. There were several campaigners who responded to that with excuses as to why they could not file. None of the reasons made sense and they were all conflicting. I could not understand why they didn’t utilize this opportunity. If they had filed, the ICC could have intervened long ago and held the British establishment to account for their crimes against Assange, at least financially. Nobody likes to be hit in their pockets.

Several times throughout my 9 months of campaigning I witnesses sabotage of Assange from within the WikiLeaks “community”. If they don’t like something you say they simply mob you into submission to their will. There’s no discussion or communication just harassment, bullying and intimidation.

I witnessed quite a few campaigners abuse others in order to silence them about truthful information. This was greatly confusing and damaging to the cause. Pointing this out caused a backlash against me. However, nothing could have prepared me for the London Gatekeeper.

London Gatekeeper

I noticed that Assange’s support base in London was quite small. A Finnish friend wishing to enable me to defend Assange, financed my trip to London in September so I could lend a helping hand as boots on the ground, so to speak.

After the first couple weeks in London, I was astonished to discover that nobody in the UK knew where Julian was. They didn’t know he was locked in Belmarsh on a mere bail violation and they didn’t know about Nils Melzers UN Torture Report on Assange. I gave this feedback to Melzer in November and soon after Doctors for Assange @Doctors4Assange released their open letter warning that Julian might die if he’s not released from prison and given specialized medical care.

In October, I went to a Julian Assange Defense Committee (JADC) meeting where I met the JADC founder and London’s Gatekeeper, Emmy Butlin, known as “Greek Emmy” @greekemmy on Twitter. I was referred to Ms Butlin by a half dozen or more key campaigners. In fact, all new Assange supporters are referred to her with any and all questions and ideas for action.

I wrote an article highlighting the JADC event speakers and published it to The Liberty Beacon (TLB). That’s when Ms Butlin began targeting me. She didn’t like that I published my article a week or so before she completed her article of the event. Oops! And here I thought I was helping Assange by opening a new audience for him through The Liberty Beacon.

From then on Ms Butlin did everything in her power to sabotage me and my efforts to help Assange. She went so far as to physically assault me at a Trafalgar Square protest in November, when she saw me heading towards the microphone to give a speech, notes in hand. I had already arranged with the organizer of the protest “Truman Human”, that I would prepare a speech appropriate for an audience who knew nothing about the plight of Assange.

I knew Truman witnessed something of Ms Bultin’s wrist grabbing assault because he asked me “what was that about”? He kindly made sure I was able to give my speech despite her efforts to prevent it.

You can clearly hear in my voice that I was shaken up from the emotional shock of the assault. Nonetheless Ruptly told me my speech was “excellent”.

Somebody had called the police before the protest (I wonder who) and told them we were doing a “marching protest”. That would require a special permit which Truman had not applied for. The police insisted many times that we must “disperse and leave the square” even though Truman explained to them that we are not marching but staying in place. This delayed the start of the protest by an hour and a half at least.

Ms Bultin had sabotaged the previous protest I promoted in October, that was held at Belmarsh prison.

I was contacted by Australian activists who were concerned about the control of information by some bad apples within the WikiLeaks community. They thought it was a good idea to support activists initiatives like mine, which are independent, because the London Gatekeepers were preventing anyone else from taking any initiative to defend Assange.

I reached out to a university student who was leading a protest at Belmarsh prison and I suggested we combine our efforts. He agreed to highlight my petition directed at Governor Rob Davis, which had received a significant 12,000 signatures and to focus on the withholding of Julian’s mail for three months by the Belmarsh staff, including legal documents. Assange was being denied access to his lawyers and they were forced to send legal documents to him by post. So by severing both incoming and outgoing mail they were interfering with his ability to prepare a legal defense against the U.S. extradition charges.

My team made graphics for the protest and we promoted it so that would attract a greater number of people. I asked other campaigners to promote it as well and it gained much attention.

As I stepped forward to give my speech, I watched Ms Butlin draw the Ruptly photographer away just as I was handed the microphone. I tried not to let that distract me.

You can hear me in the background of Ms Butlin’s interview, giving my speech. She shamelessly stole credit for the protest and completely ignored the issue of Belmarsh withholding Julian Assange’s mail! It was so important to highlight and yet it was censored by Ms Butlin. You can hear Ms Butlin’s speech here (48 min.).

EF Press did manage to catch my speech at Belmarsh but Ms Butlin made sure he edited out the section where I mentioned the withholding of Julian’s mail! EF Press later apologized to me for that after he listened to my Trafalgar Square speech, which he thought was “incredible”. You can view that speech, here.

I later interviewed the organizer of the Blemarsh protest and his mother, at their home. They both told me about Ms Butlin’s attempts to sabotage his protest. She resorted to all kinds of tricks. She tried to bully him to delete his Facebook event page and create a new one after it already had hundreds of followers. She claimed “Storm Belmarsh” was too aggressive of a title and “might attract anarchists”. However, Unity4J promoted a previous protest at Belmarsh with that same title which John Shipton attended.

While in London, I interviewed about a dozen people to get background information on Assange’s case. Some of the people I spoke with knew Assange or they defended him for years, through activism. From their independent testimonies I learned that Ms Butlin has a long history of targeting, sabotaging and assaulting newbies wanting to defend Assange. None of the witnesses wanted their names published and were visibly afraid of the consequences if their names were known.

In fact, I was later threatened by an Italian Anonymous member and the Belmarsh protest organizer who didn’t want their testimony’s published. I think they changed their minds after they realized how much influence Ms Butlin has within the WikiLeaks community. I assured them both that I am a professional and I would not include their real names if they don’t want me to but I suggested their testimony was important for others to hear.

The Italian anon was hyper tense and threatened to “write to WikiLeaks” and tell them I’m a “liar” and say that I made up their testimonies if I divulged their statements. I found these threats cowardly and childish and this kind of behavior gives a bad name to Anonymous.

Ms Butlin used the same manipulative and cunning tactics to sabotage Truman’s protests. She brought up “health concerns” and made damn sure to keep me out of the London community WhatsApp group for Assange.

Truman confessed later that Ms Butlin and the JADC had prevented him from holding a protest at Trafalgar Square since the abduction of Assange from the embassy. Their reasoning was that “There are too many people” at the square”. Now correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that the idea of a protest, especially considering the blackout of information by the British Press?

Truman finally stepped up and took the initiative himself, despite the consequences, in order to make a protest happen at the most busy place in all of England. I respected him for it. As soon as he announced the date for November 9th I asked other activists to promote his protest and together we managed to draw enough attention so that WikiLeaks campaigners began promoting it too.

It was becoming clear to me that grass roots and working class people who want to support Assange don’t get the support they need from the WikiLeaks community, which is support that would make the movement grow. It was difficult for me to understand why they are harming him in this way and keeping the movement small. Ms Butlin, the JADC women and arrogance within the community are the biggest reasons for this. This was why I formed a team of my own to promote the grass roots actions in London.

After I left London, I watched as Ms Butlin and the JADC women sabotaged Truman’s second Trafalgar Square protest on December 14th. I warned Truman to be careful. It was clear he was being targeted and I was concerned he would get hurt after I saw this tweet:

The protest was Truman’s initiative not the JADC’s. Truman responded to Ms Butlin’s announcement with this:

Sure enough, not even one hour after everyone gathered at Trafalgar Square and the JADC led the crowd of protesters away from the square and took them on a march to Downing Street! They must have gotten a permit from the state to march and in doing so had undermined Truman’s protest, completely. It was so incredibly cruel and Truman naturally was quite hurt. He announced he was going to leave Twitter altogether and that he was finished doing any defensive action for Assange. I knew the pain he was feeling all to well.

Truman later removed his tweet. It’s awful to put your heart and soul into something just to have your efforts sabotaged repeatedly by somebody else.

I was told by three other peopl, independent from each other, that Ms Butlin was the reason there was nobody left outside the embassy to hold vigil and prevent government forces from capturing Assange. She had chased them all away with her intolerable behavior.

One activist known as the “crazy artist” and a second activist from the embassy days, said Ms Butlin stole credit for their work. Ms Butlin’s violent temperament was also witnessed when she assaulted a fellow activist in front of the embassy, in 2018.

But it doesn’t end there.

Westminster Magistrate Court scandal

Ms Butlin was running a criminal operation for members of the WikiLeaks community, at Westminster Magistrate’s Court. There’s limited seating at the courthouse with just 13 seats available for public attendance. So the WikiLeaks community thought it was a good idea to let Ms Butlin gatekeep who they would allow into the public seating area of the courthouse based on a preapproved list.

Ms Butlin and her JADC gang would go to the courthouse early in the morning and wait 2-4 hours until the court doors were opened. Being the first in line they would quickly enter and occupy the public seating area. Then when someone from their special list arrived, one of them would stand up and offer their seat and leave.

Ms Butlin was also policing the halls and demanding the private details of everyone else attempting to attend Assange’s hearing. Do I need to point out how illegal this is? The public seating area of a courthouse is for the public, without discrimination. That is the law. Nobody is allowed to control who gets a seat at Assange’s hearing! The fact that somebody would do this speaks volumes about their inner character. The fact that people within the WikiLeaks community would allow this also reveals that there are indeed bad apples within the bunch.

The court list operation was exposed by French activist, Monika Karbowska. She incidentally was also assaulted by Ms Butlin outside the courthouse during the October 21st hearing. By aggressively grabbing her wrist in the same manner she had done to me, Ms Butlin attempted to prevent Ms Karbowska from entering the courthouse.

When Karbowska exposed the court scandal members of the WikiLeaks community attacked her credibility. They openly admitted they were running the court list operation to help “elderly people” like Julian Assange’s father, John Shipton, who benefited from not having to stand outside the courthouse for several hours before a hearing. While it sounded good, this was an admission of guilt, culpability and a bald faced lie.

Ms Karbowska and her French activist friends had witnessed young and fit WikiLeaks ‘elites’ shamelessly benefiting from the court list, which excluded everyone else who was not “preapproved”. These petty criminals like to keep the inner circle of WikiLeaks “defenders” small. They are threatened by talented new people and many of them are more than happy to see us get targeted and they will also do the targeting themselves.

How is a single individual supposed to defend oneself when tag teamed in a barrage of insults or mobbed with false accusations by a dozen people? Their system of exclusion has been perfected over years and they are quite good at it.

These amoral ones were content to have Ms Butlin do the dirty work for them. It doesn’t phase them in the least to see good people get hurt so long as it enables them to maintain control of all information pertaining to Assange via their own channels.

It was when I read Ms Karbowska’s account that I decided I must also come forward and tell the truth about Ms Butlin’s targeted assault against me. I was motivated by a concern that other people were going to get hurt if I did not speak up and her sabotage was starting to get to me. At the time, I naively assumed the rest of the WikiLeaks community did not know about Ms Butlin’s abusive behavior.

The elites of the community who participated in the criminal court list operation were livid that it was exposed. Now they were going to have to stand in line for hours with all the lowly peasants on equal footing. They were embarrassed decided that I also deserved to be slandered for Ms Karbowska’s discovery, since Ms Butlin had targeted and assaulted both of us within the same 30 day period.

And while they were at it they thought it was a good idea to target The Liberty Beacon Project! This is what they shamelessly resort to when the truth is inconvenient for them.

And the character assassination and gaslighting of the issue continued..

Actually, there were two witnesses to Ms Butlin’s violent assault against Ms Karbowska at the courthouse.

Attacking my credibility and suggesting they don’t know who I am while at the same time revealing I’m “new to Assange case 6 months ago” which means they do know who I am, was rediculous.

That “newly created account” belongs to a Finnish friend who generously funded my trip to London so I could defend Julian Assange. That’s his kick boxing picture at the bottom of the screenshot. Jyrki was a witness to all of the harassment and abuse these cunning individuals threw at me.

Some campaigners resorted to threats to bully me into silence and even suggested I should be “handled”.

These are just a few samples of the tactics used to bully someone into compliance.

I told the truth and I was punished for it. I wanted to publish my story sooner but after the first @Doctors4Assange open letter was released in December, warning that Julian’s immune system was so weakened due to prolonged torture and to the point of near death, I knew I was needed on the campaign front. I realized it was crucial to push hard for his release at that very moment. I was also concerned that my story would negatively effect the campaign to free Assange so I refrained from bringing it up.

Bullying can be very effective and that’s why these bad apples use it. Unfortuneately they are using the powerful name of WikiLeaks to inflict harm on others and to hide their mistakes. How many other innocent people have they targeted and harassed in the same way? I’m sure that I’m far from being their first victim.

Meanwhile, I turned my focus to leading a Twitter storm that would ensure as many influencers as possible, government officials and international rights bodies, would see Doctors For Assange’s emergency medial warning and open letter.

I led the #StopTheTorture campaign at Christmas. In the past I always worked with a team to do Twitter storms. This was the first time I developed all the material and executed it myself. This was just my first Twitter storm in defense of Assange and it was quite sucessful.

In fact, I think it blew the minds of campaigners that I could pull it off without their help. And right on cue, just before I launched the Twitter storm, I became a target of the fake anons. I will discuss more about them in Part Two of this report.

Conclusion

While I recognize there are some excellent grass roots journalists, credible experts in their fields and honest defenders of Julian Assange within the WikiLeaks community, there’s also incompetent ones who are undermining the great work of experts, tarnishing the name of WikiLeaks and bringing a bad wrap to Assange.

I witnessed campaigners resorting to childish attacks against each other and refusing to work together or support grass roots initiatives since the ideas did not come from the preapproved “inner circle”. This alone is enough to destroy a cause. When someone you supposedly care about is hanging on by a thread for his life, that’s when you set ego and all other differences aside and work together. That’s when you unify. Any decent campaigner who’s worth their salt knows this. If there’s an issue you best resolve it. You don’t bully, harass, or resort to government tactics of character assassination in order to force others to comply with your demands. Ego-based ‘dog eat dog’ dysfunction is not going to free Assange.

I will tell you this. The key point of focus in business training are individual ethics. It’s individual ethics that create the foundation of an organization. Have you ever heard the saying “one bad apple ruins the bunch”? Well, without ethical behavior from all members of your team the entire organization will fail. The criminal behavior of one person negatively reflects on the reputation of everyone else within that organization. When petty crimes are tolerated, it sets a standard which creates a culture of impunity and puts everyone at risk.

Since I began defending Julian, I watched the bad apples create much division and confusion within the movement as they turned new supporters away, in droves. Either they are too self-absorbed to realize the result of their actions or this sabotage is by design.

Assange has supported many grass roots journalists like myself, over the years. WikiLeaks is supposed to stand for Free Speech, Press Freedom and essentially human rights. But by behaving lawlessly and covering up their crimes with even more crimes (character assassination is a crime), does it really take a rocket scientist to realize why Assange is not free? Their bad behavior negatively impacts the image people have of WikiLeaks which ultimately leads to it’s founder, Julian Assange being blamed for their incompetence. This is just how fundamental psychology works. I hope people are able to make a distinction and not blame Assange for their lack of all empathy and morality. A real leader is a living example not a hypocrite.

Assange had basically waged war on the Empire through the launch of WikiLeaks, in 2006. He was immediately hunted and within two years Assange was on the run, paying with cash as he went to avoid an electronic trail and crashing on people’s sofa’s without a trace. Within 4 years of launching WikiLeaks, Assange was framed for rape and put on house arrest in the UK. Soon after, he was isolated in the Ecaudorian embassy on asylum to escape extradition to the United States.

There’s just no way Assange could know everything that went on outside the embassy. I don’t believe he should he be held responsible for the dubious behaviors of the people who surround him like moths to a flame and especially now that he’s behind bars, tortured and silenced.

WikiLeaks will need all the support they can get during the next stage of the campaigning to #FreeAssange and stop U.S. Extradition.

While it may seem to some like I’m “attacking” Ms Butlin, please remember that she attacked me first and when I told the truth about her abuse she set out to destroy my credibility. She is misusing her power of influence.

Stay tuned for Part Two…

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About: Ariyana Love is an Independent Journalist, Goodwill Ambassador to Palestine (ICSPR), a Nutrition Specialist and a Human Rights Defender.