{"id":215563,"date":"2022-06-27T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=215563"},"modified":"2022-06-23T03:33:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T02:33:46","slug":"dont-extradite-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/06\/dont-extradite-assange\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Extradite Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"

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22 Jun 2022 – <\/em>Last Friday\u2019s decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to authorise the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States is both deeply shameful and unsurprising. Her action paves the way for Assange to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act, introduced by the US government shortly after entering World War I, with a sentence of 175 years if found guilty. In essence, the US wishes to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports the truth about the US.<\/p>\n

Despite all the warnings from human rights groups<\/a>, advocates of press freedom<\/a>, Nils Melzer<\/a> (then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), doctors<\/a>, lawyers<\/a> and many other people<\/a> around the world, it has long been clear that Washington is determined to punish Assange and make an example of him as a warning to others. As always, US allies will go along with what the Mafia Godfather wants.<\/p>\n

US political journalist Glenn Greenwald noted<\/a> that Patel\u2019s act \u2018further highlights the utter sham of American and British sermons about freedom, democracy and a free press.\u2019 Assange is being persecuted relentlessly because he and WikiLeaks have arguably done more than anyone else to expose the vast extent of the crimes of US empire.<\/p>\n

Greenwald added:<\/p>\n

\u2018Free speech and press freedoms do not exist in reality in the U.S. or the UK. They are merely rhetorical instruments to propagandize their domestic population and justify and ennoble the various wars and other forms of subversion they constantly wage in other countries in the name of upholding values they themselves do not support. The Julian Assange persecution is a great personal tragedy, a political travesty and a grave danger to basic civic freedoms. But it is also a bright and enduring monument to the fraud and deceit that lies at the heart of these two governments\u2019 depictions of who and what they are.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dissident Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone made<\/a> a similar point, that Assange\u2019s \u2018refusal to bow down and submit\u2019 has:<\/p>\n

\u2018exposed the lie that the so-called free democracies of the western world support the free press and defend human rights.\u00a0The US, UK and Australia are colluding to extradite a journalist for exposing the truth even as they claim to oppose tyranny and autocracy, even as they claim to support world press freedoms, and even as they loudly decry the dangers of government-sponsored disinformation.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peter Oborne, an all-too-rare example of a journalist speaking out on behalf of Assange, called<\/a> Patel\u2019s decision a \u2018catastrophic blow\u2019 to press freedom. But, he said, it was a blow that had been carried out with:<\/p>\n

\u2018the silent assent of much of the mainstream press. Too many British newspapers and broadcasters have treated the Assange case as a dirty family secret. They have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing leading up to the Patel decision is the most important case involving free speech this century.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not only was there \u2018silent assent\u2019, but much of the media actually cheered and applauded Assange\u2019s arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019 \u2018with undisguised glee\u2019, as Alan MacLeod wrote<\/a> at the time:<\/p>\n

\u2018The Daily Mail<\/strong>\u2019s front-page headline (4\/12\/19<\/a>) read, \u201cThat\u2019ll Wipe the Smile Off His Face,\u201d and devoted four pages to the \u201cdownfall of a narcissist\u201d who was removed from \u201cinside his fetid lair\u201d to finally \u201cface justice.\u201d The Daily Mirror<\/strong> (4\/11\/19<\/a>) described him as \u201can unwanted guest who abused his hospitality,\u201d while the Times of London<\/strong> (4\/12\/19<\/a>) claimed \u201cno one should feel sorry\u201d for the \u201coverdue eviction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Mirror<\/strong> (4\/13\/19<\/a>) also published an opinion piece from Labour member of Parliament Jess Phillips that began by stating, \u201cFinally Julian Assange, everyone\u2019s least favourite squatter, has been kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy.\u201d She described the 47-year-old Australian as a \u201cgrumpy, stroppy teenager.\u201d\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oborne also noted that Patel\u2019s decision:<\/p>\n

\u2018turns investigative journalism into a criminal act, and licenses the United States to mercilessly hunt down offenders wherever they can be found, bring them to justice and punish them with maximum severity.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrew Neil, the right-wing journalist and broadcaster, reflexively listed Assange\u2019s supposed faults (\u2018reckless\u2019, \u2018stupid\u2019, \u2018narcissist\u2019) in a Daily Mail opinion piece<\/a>. But he still made clear his opposition to Assange\u2019s extradition:<\/p>\n

\u2018<\/strong>It is thanks to Assange that we know many appalling things that America would prefer we didn\u2019t know. He does not deserve to spend the rest of his life in some high-tech American hellhole for doing what should come naturally to all good journalists \u2014 exposing what powerful people don\u2019t want to be exposed.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The BBC\u2019s John Simpson<\/a> and Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens<\/a> have also been supportive of Assange.<\/p>\n

But the few editorials that appeared in the British \u2018mainstream\u2019, while meekly and belatedly opposing extradition, were much less damning in their comments. According to our searches of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database, the first edition of the Independent\u2019s editorial was titled, \u2018It\u2019s time to release Assange \u2013 he has suffered enough\u2019. By the time the editorial appeared online<\/a>, the title had been watered down to:<\/p>\n

\u2018Justice for Julian Assange should be tempered with mercy\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And an extra line had been added:<\/p>\n

\u2018The WikiLeaks founder is no hero but nor should he be a martyr\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The paper\u2019s praise for the vital work of Assange and Wikileaks was begrudging and limited, with the usual \u2018mainstream\u2019 caveats and distortions mixed in (see Johnstone\u2019s powerful demolition<\/a> of the multiple smears against Assange):<\/p>\n

\u2018We were resolutely unsympathetic to Mr Assange\u2019s claim to have been unfairly treated by the British and Swedish criminal justice systems. We urged him to face justice over the allegations of rape in Sweden, and considered his self-imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to be a form of punishment for his refusal to do so.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Guardian, which had benefited enormously from Assange\u2019s ground-breaking work \u2013 with many of its journalists publishing<\/a> numerous snide articles and disparaging remarks about him \u2013 described<\/a> Patel\u2019s decision, with pathetic understatement, as \u2018a bad day for journalism\u2019. Of course, there was no mention in the editorial of the Guardian\u2019s own shameful role in helping to create the conditions for Assange\u2019s persecution; not least their fake front-page \u2018news\u2019 story<\/a> in November 2018 claiming that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump\u2019s former campaign manager, supposedly<\/a> held secret talks with Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.<\/p>\n

\u2018How Far Have We Sunk?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Nils Melzer packed up and moved on from his term as the UN Special Prosecutor on Torture, on the day that Patel announced Assange\u2019s extradition, he said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018How far have we sunk if we prosecute people who expose war crimes for exposing war crimes?<\/p>\n

\u2018How far have we sunk when we no longer prosecute our own war criminals because we identify more with them<\/em> than we identify with the people that actually exposed these crimes?<\/p>\n

\u2018What does that tell about us and about our governments?<\/p>\n

\u2018How far have we sunk when telling the truth becomes a crime?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The questions were left hanging in the air. But anyone with basic standards of ethics and wisdom knows that a society which has sunk this low is being governed by so-called \u2018leaders\u2019 who:<\/p>\n