By a commentator for the Earn Folket Media.
This is a chronicle. Analysis and standpoint are the commentator's own, and do not necessarily match the Earn Folket Media's line.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently in a high-security prison in the UK. The government will hand him out to the United States where he risks 175 years in prison. His only "crime" is that he, as a journalist, revealed the US war crimes.
From 2012 to 2019, Assange lived in asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London, on the run from US imperialism. Assange is Australian citizen, and Australia has long asked for him to come to his home country. Nevertheless, the US allies in the United Kingdom and other European countries would rather extradite him to the United States, where he is charged with espionage and computer theft. The question to be dealt with by the Supreme Court is whether the government's decision to hand out Assange to the United States is legal.
Since 2019, when Ecuador invited British police into his embassy to arrest Assange, the journalist has sat in the UK's most notorious high -security prison. Here he lives under relationships that his wife and family strongly criticize. On February 20 and 21, his case was dealt with by the British Supreme Court in London, but Assange was too sick to participate. Before the asylum in Ecuador's embassy, Assange from Sweden escaped, where he was accused of sexual abuse - a case that was later closed.
Assange revealed war crimes
The reason for the persecution of Assange is that Wikileaks, where he was central, published a number of secret documents from the United States in 2010, several of which revealed the brutality of the imperialists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Particular attention received a video showing how the pilots in an Apache helicopter from the United States used their canon to kill two Iraqi Reuters journalists, Namir Noor-Eldeen (22) and Saeed Chmagh (40), and nine other men. Two children were also seriously injured in the attack. The United States subsequently covered the case.
In other words, Wikileaks not only exposed war crimes, but a direct attack on the right to conduct journalism. This bourgeois-democratic court is completely set aside not only by the United States in the case against Assange, but also by the US co-runners in countries such as Sweden and the United Kingdom. We see this in the context of the decay and crisis in the bourgeois political system, where democratic freedoms and rights are now systematically undermined.
Attack on journalists and press freedom
Assange's wife Stella Assange said outside the London court house: “There is an attack on journalists all over the world. It is an attack on the truth and an attack on the public's right to know. " The AP news agency believes it is likely that the Supreme Court will spend several weeks to make a decision - if Assange loser is handed out to the United States, which means he will die in captivity.
Norwegian PEN, the Norwegian department of "the world's largest writer and freedom of speech organization" Pen International, protests in a call against the process against Assange, and writes, among other things: "If Assange is handed over to the United States, the charges mean to equate journalistic revelations with espionage, because the actions As described in the charge are mainly forms of obtaining information that are common methods for journalists. This includes the discovery of the leaky, secretly stamped information. It will be the first time US authorities are using spy legislation against a publisher. ”
The case of Assange is just one of many examples of the complete lawlessness that prevails to those who the United States point out as their enemies. Liquidations, torture and captivity without law and judgment are methods they have often indicated, including the prisoners of Guantanamo. They kidnap systematically citizens from other countries, and keep them in captivity without being tried. Such cases are often legitimized with lying prices such as "the war on terror" or "the war on drugs". The Assange case shows that even bourgeois journalists do not have protection in this community. The attacks on freedom of the press are one of many expressions of the crisis in the bourgeois political system and the tendency towards open fascism.
Tragically and ironically, the trial in London takes place at the same time as Western media and authorities are in harsh that the Russian opposition Navalnij recently died in the hands of Russian imperialism.
References:
Holds your breath for Assange | Class struggle
Julian Assange does not meet in court because he is too sick
(VG)
WikiLeaks – War & Military
Julian Assange indictment fails to mention WikiLeaks video that exposed US ‘war crimes’ in Iraq
(The Guardian)
‘All lies’: how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq
(The Guardian)
Norwegian PEN and a number of other organizations ask that the extradition of Julian Assange be stopped and he is set free
(Norwegian PEN)
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