WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been honored with a peace award from Australia’s Sydney Peace Foundation. Assange accepted the award in London, where is free on bail fighting extradition to Sweden to face questioning on sexual crime allegations. Sydney Peace Foundation director Stuart Rees paid tribute to Assange and WikiLeaks.

Stuart Rees: “We think that the struggle for peace with justice inevitably involves conflict, inevitably involves controversy. If it was a sort of stumbling toward some kind of consensus, nothing would ever happen. Now, in that respect, we think that you and WikiLeaks have brought about what we think is a watershed in journalism and in freedom of information, and potentially in politics.”