R2K Whistleblowers 2014: Chelsea Manning & Edward Snowden
“I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”
Chelsea Manning (previously Bradley Manning) was sentenced last year to 35 years in prison after releasing the biggest cache of classified documents in whistleblower history. (The day after sentencing, Manning announced that her true gender is female, and would no longer be known by her former name, Bradley.)
Uploaded to Wikileaks in 2010 when Manning was an intelligence analyst for the US Army, the documents exposed the reality of the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and included 250,000 diplomatic cables that have shed unprecedented light on secret US international relations. These revelations have been vital in informing global debate about US military and diplomatic activities and helped catalyse mass political uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Despite the fact that his revelations were overwhelmingly in the public interest, revealing widespread evidence of human rights violations and abuses of power by the US government and its allies, Manning has been treated as a traitor – tried in a military court, held in solitary confinement for more than a year, and ultimately convicted for violations of the US Espionage Act. She was 26 years old at the time.
The role of Wikileaks in Manning’s whistleblowing actions has also drawn the wrath of the US government, resulting in pressure to shut the website down, starve it of financial support, and target its members for prosecution.
Keep reading: Private Manning Support Group
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“I am not afraid, because this is the choice I’ve made”
The past year has seen an unprecedented global debate about privacy and invasive state surveillance, thanks to revelations by US national-security whistleblower Edward Snowden. His decision to leak thousands of classified documents brought to light shocking abuses of power by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has routinely spied on hundreds of millions of people, not just in the US but across the world – and lied about it to the public, the courts, and the US Congress.
Snowden’s revelations have sparked global outrage, and while the US government has promised to reform its surveillance policies, Snowden has been charged with espionage and theft of documents and is currently in hiding in Russia. He has said his motive was “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”
Keep reading: The Guardian’s NSA Whistleblower Files
Manning and Snowden are featured in R2K’s 2014 Whistleblower Calendar. Find out more here.
