What's happening to those named WikiLeaks sources?

What's happening to those named
WikiLeaks sources?

15 September, 2011 | By Joshua Keating
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Earlier this week, I wrote

about the case of two

Zimbabwean generals

who may

face treason

charges

for comments

about their superiors

made in a confidential

conversation with the U.

S. ambassador, and

whose names were

subsequently revealed in

last month's unredacted

WikiLeaks dump.

That case still seems to be

pending, but there's been another troubling development in
Ethiopia, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists:

U.S. diplomatic cables

disclosed last month

by WikiLeaks

cited an Ethiopian journalist by name and referred to his

unnamed government source, forcing the journalist to flee

the country after police interrogated him over the source's

identity, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. It

is the first instance CPJ has confirmed in which a citation in

one of the cables has caused direct repercussions for a

journalist.

On September 5 and 6, officials from Ethiopia's

Government Communication Affairs Office (GCAO)

summoned journalist Argaw Ashine to their offices in the

capital, Addis Ababa, with his press accreditation, Ashine

told CPJ on Tuesday. He was summoned because he had

been cited in an October 26, 2009,

cable

from the U.S.

embassy in Ethiopia regarding purported GCAO plans in

2009 to silence the now-defunct

Addis Neger

then the

country's leading independent newspaper, local journalists

said.

On September 8, Ashine was summoned again, this time by

police, who interrogated him and gave him 24 hours to

either reveal the identity of his source at the GCAO office

or face unspecified consequences, the journalist told CPJ.

Ashine fled Ethiopia over the weekend. He has requested

that his current location not be disclosed for safety reasons.

Given that a central tenet of WikiLeaks' model is protecting the
identity of its sources, it seems pretty tough to defend the exposing
of a journalist in an authoritarian country, even if it embarasses the
U.S. government in the process.

The Christian Science Monitor also reports (via the essential
twitter source for all things WikiLeaks Trevor Timm) that, so far
at least, Chinese sources named in the cable don't seem to be
suffering consequences:

Two weeks after WikiLeaks posted unredacted versions of

a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, revealing the

names of American embassies’ local contacts around the

world, there are no signs of repercussions for Chinese

sources, according to people who have themselves been

“outed.”

“Nothing has happened to me, yet, and I have not heard of

anyone else getting into trouble,” says Wang Zhenyu, a

Beijing lawyer who says he has often met U.S. diplomats to

discuss the progress of legal reform in China and whose

name was meant to have been “strictly protected”

according to a cable that quotes him.

“I don’t think I’ll have any problem from the government,

though some ordinary people do not understand," adds

Wang Xiaodong, an outspoken nationalist ideologue with a

large following on the Web, who also shared his insights

with American diplomats, according to the leaked cables.

Update: Another piece from the Globe and Mail's Mark
MacKinnon notes that while there have been no legal
consequences, the response from China's nationalist internet has
been furious:

Some of China’s top academics and human rights activists

are being attacked as “rats” and “spies” after their names

were revealed as U.S. Embassy sources in the unredacted

WikiLeaks cables that have now been posted online.

The release of the previously protected names has sparked

an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with

some advocating violence against those now known to have

met with U.S. Embassy staff. “When the time comes, they

should be arrested and killed,” reads one typical posting on

a prominent neo-Maoist website.

The repercussions could indeed be dire in some

circumstances, particularly for Tibetan and Uighur activists

exposed as having passed information to Washington. In

other cases – including some Communist Party officials

named as “protected” or “strictly protected” sources – the

fallout is more likely to be embarrassment or perhaps lost

promotions.

We'll continue to track the fallout for the sources in the days ahead

Courtesy

Argaw Ashine is the chairman of the
Ethiopian Environment Journalists
Association, the deputy chair of
Ethiopia's Foreign Correspondents'
Association, and the local
correspondent of Kenya's Nation
Media Group Read More