Dear Mr. Assange,

The enclosed book is the cornerstone of an international campaign to bring urgent awareness to the plight of Myanmar’s 22,000 unlawfully imprisoned dissident activists — men and women held in inhumane conditions, many tortured to death, executed, or disappeared since the military coup of February 2021. Among them are Myanmar’s democratically elected government, including Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, now enduring her fifth year of solitary confinement, sealed in a windowless cell, denied medicine, denied family, denied counsel. Injured in a recent earthquake and now suffering what may very well be a terminal heart condition, time is running out.

We write to you not only as a former political prisoner who understands firsthand the cost of challenging authoritarian power, but as one whose unthinkable moral courage — to face and endure your imprisonment while refusing to betray truth — has become a beacon to the world. You know what it means to be vilified, to be targeted, to have freedom stolen in an attempt to silence dissent. And yet, you have not been silenced. Your family, too, has carried this weight with unbreakable dignity — a reminder that tyranny never imprisons just the dissident, but the entire circle of love around them.

The parallels between your persecution and the vilification of Aung San Suu Kyi are stark and troubling. Much like you, she has been mischaracterized in ways that distract from the core truth: she is not being punished for failing democracy, but for daring to lead it. Media portrayals that reduced her to a defender of genocide ignored critical facts and played directly into the junta’s strategy: to strip her of moral authority and confuse global solidarity.

Our research — published in Burma’s Voices of Freedom — shows that Aung San Suu Kyi did more to advocate for Rohingya rights than any leader in the five decades before her. Yet because of distortion, primarily in the corporate media, the world fell silent. And silence, as you know, is not neutral — it is complicity. That silence has cost lives.

Meanwhile, the military junta prepares to stage a sham election in December, while its legitimate democratically elected opposition remains behind bars. Over 20 million urgently need humanitarian aid. Three million are displaced. Villages, monasteries, and schools are bombed daily. Entire communities are erased while authoritarian allies — China, Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Iran — enable the slaughter.

This is not merely a national crisis. It is the world’s conscience on trial.

Mr. Assange, you know more than anyone that freedom and justice demand not only ideals but sacrifice. Your endurance has lit a path for millions who refuse to comply with tyranny, who keep speaking out when silence is demanded. That is why we appeal to you now: lend your voice to Myanmar. Call for the release of its prisoners. Be the echo that pierces the silence, the refusal that inspires others to refuse.

The enclosed book — Conversation with a Dictator: A Challenge to the Authoritarian Assault — is not merely a document of history, but a summons. It tells the story of a people who, like you, have chosen conscience over survival. Our campaign — Use Your Freedom — is built on the same principle that animates your life: that one voice, raised at the right moment, can shake the machinery of power.

You, sir, hold a beacon of light for Aung San Suu Kyi and for every prisoner who cannot speak. We ask you to shine it once more. Please issue a statement calling for her release, and for the release of all 22,000 dissidents still entombed in Myanmar’s prisons.

We are here to support you, to share further details if you wish. But above all, we write with gratitude. Thank you for heeding this call, for keeping alive the lineage of truth-seekers who risk everything so that humanity might one day awaken.

With solidarity, reverence, and a deep bow of gratitude,

Fergus Harlow
Executive Director, Use Your Freedom

Alan Clements
Author, Conversation with a Dictator & Unsilenced