Justice for Wikileaking Bradley Manning ?

That Manning is a responsible citizen who should be thanked rather prosecuted, rests on the argument that his actions have had several beneficial effects. He has exposed war crimes, such as the casual taking of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. The WikiLeaks disclosures have been a catalyst for the revolutions across the Middle East. He has exposed the government's obsession with secrecy and the consequent over classification of public documents. Manning, Julian Assange and his colleagues have been doing the job which journalists could have performed if they had been more diligent, if their attitudes had not been so influenced by and tied up with establishment views.

Manning's defence will surely refer to the duty of any citizen to insist on the transparency in government, to challenge secrets, in particular when they appear to have concealed government illegalities. In 1950 the Nuremburg Tribunal ruled that under international law, even if an individual acted according to a government's orders, this did not relieve that person of the responsibility of making a moral choice. In 1960, a US Congressional Committee on Government Operations reported 'Secrecy – the first refuge of incompetents – must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society.'

Those arguments should include the reminder that the Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg during 1971, were classed at a much higher security clearance than anything Manning is accused of releasing. Ellsberg was not convicted of a single crime and became a national hero.

Even in Australia, if debate about Bradley' Manning's actions confronts those arms of government which aim to punish him, there's a chance that social pressures will influence the otherwise remote and invisible processes of military law. David House says, ' If the American public stand up and demand his release and demand a fair trial for him and his due process, I feel he may actually get a fair trial and he may not spend very long in prison at all.'

In the August 2^nd forum, Bradley Manning versus the Culture of Revenge , the group, Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning will also be 'standing up' for the principle that in an independent Australia, fairness in the administration of justice also needs the commitment and outspokenness of responsible citizens.