Stella Assange: Another protagonist of Assange's story

Reference News Network reported on July 9 that the website of Switzerland's "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" published an article entitled "Stella Assange first fought for Julian Assange as a lawyer, then fell in love with him and changed his image", written by Matthias Venez. Excerpts from the full text are as follows:

This has just happened. Stella Assange learned hours ago that Julian Assange, who had been imprisoned for many years, had been released after a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice. Julian is her husband, the father of her two children, the founder of WikiLeaks, and a thorn in the side of Western intelligence. At the moment, Stella Assange is being interviewed by the BBC.

A female journalist told Stella Assange: "You looked completely different this morning, your expression changed completely. The latter smiled, his cheeks slightly reddened. What has happened around Julian Assange over the past few days and hours has been a victory for him and his supporters. And this is also a victory for Stella Assange.

Change the image

Before Stella Assange's appearance, Julian Assange's public persona was a mix of hacker, system critic and liberal nerd. Critics and prosecutors accuse him of vanity, showmanship and espionage. He is said to have helped Trump become president, "and willingly used by Putin." Swedish prosecutors have opened investigations into him in connection with two cases of sexual offences and have issued arrest warrants for him in Europe. Assange declined to be questioned about it, but he has never been prosecuted for it.

The public, on the other hand, learns about a different Julian through Stella. Her two children, she said, had never met their free-spirited father. She also talked about her love for this man, saying that she was not allowed to kiss him once during his five years in prison. She presents this extraordinary egoist as a loving, hard-working person.

Stella Assange was born in Johannesburg in 1983. Her mother was a Spanish stage director and her father was a Swedish architect. Stella Assange spent her childhood and adolescence in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Sweden and Spain.

After graduating from secondary school, Stella Assange studied law and political science in London and earned a master's degree in refugee law from Oxford University. Later, she studied international law in Madrid. In 2011, she became a member of the WikiLeaks team of lawyers and met Julian Assange. In 2010, Julian Assange released the "Afghanistan War Diary," a collection of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

Two corners for one person

Because of her ability as a lawyer and her Swedish ancestry, Stella Assange was given the task of preventing Julian Assange's extradition to Sweden.

At the time, Julian Assange was under the watchful eye of U.S. intelligence. His team of lawyers is said to have to operate only in secret so as not to attract attention. Stella even gave up her real name, Sara DeVante, for this. She was initially renamed Stella Morris and later Stella Morris-Smith Robertson.

In 2012, Julian Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to evade justice. Stella Assange often visited him there. At first as a lawyer and supporter, and later as his partner because he fell in love. During this time, she had two children with Julian. The couple initially tried to cover up the fact that Assange was the father of the child, but without success.

In 2019, Julian Assange, who had lived in the embassy for seven years, was no longer granted asylum due to the change of regime in Ecuador. The British police arrested him. Since then, Assange has been held in a high-security prison in London. Moreover, he could still be extradited to the United States and face a 175-year sentence.

Stella Assange thus began to play two roles by herself. Although she is still fighting for Assange's release, in public she becomes a mother and wife who suffers and is responsible.

Stella Assange organized demonstrations and protests. In 2022, she initiated Operation Human Chain in front of the Palace of Westminster in the British Parliament to prevent her husband's extradition. A year later, she traveled to Rome with her children, where she met with the Pope.

Story Director

Unlike her husband, Stella Assange understands that public opinion can determine success or failure, and that it can be influenced in a targeted manner.

Julian Assange has always considered himself a defender of press freedom. He has said that WikiLeaks does not intend to save journalism, but to destroy it. In his view, journalism should only report facts, leaving value judgments to each reader himself. In his opinion, the media, in particular, should not lie.

Stella Assange did the opposite. She knows that facts alone can't make a feature film, at least not a good feature film.

In 2022, Stella and Julian Assange got married in a high-security prison. A television crew in Australia began filming Stella Assange's activities a few days before the wedding. This is perhaps the most impressive way to reflect this realization.

The film crew filmed Stella talking to Julian on the phone. Witnesses were not allowed to attend the wedding, nor were the couple allowed to take wedding photos. Stella Assange told Julian on the phone: "Why do they think a wedding photo threatens them? Then she replied herself: "They are afraid that you will be noticed by the public." ”

At the end of the TV documentary, viewers see Stella Assange surrounded by demonstrators on the eve of her wedding. Stella stands in front of the heavily guarded Belmarsh Prison with a wedding cake in front of her. Demonstrators held up signs and Stella Assange wore a wedding dress.

In this one-hour TV documentary, Stella Assange holds back tears. She sighed, then hugged the child. The documentary doesn't feature a wedding and is about empathy, passionate emotions, and her husband's struggles.

Stella Assange has rekindled sympathy for her husband in the media and the public.

Politicians such as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and former leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, have expressed joy at Julian's release.

For the past few years, Stella Assange has been the director of Julian's story. The story is somewhere between behaviorism and popular romance novels.

On the first day of Julian Assange's regain of his freedom, after 12 years of losing his freedom, Stella Assange addressed the public. She said her husband had been traumatized by his imprisonment. She set up an aid fund for her husband and promoted it.

Maybe she's already working on a sequel to the story.