An Attack on Freedom of Speech Remains Exactly That
Even if the attackers are western politicians and journalists
So, it came as we expected. After years of torture, Julian Assange can be handed over to the U.S. All legal routes are now exhausted. Only Priti Patel, the British Home Secretary can stop the process.
Don’t take the torture thing from me. Take it from the Special rapporteur on torture of the United Nations and medical experts.
There will be people who say, that Assange put U.S. National security at risk.
He did. By exposing war crimes, he informed the public of what the U.S. forces have really been up to. It made it much more difficult for U.S. politicians to deny that these blatant human rights violations take place.
Just as a reminder, here is the video this whole case is about.
Notice, how the soldiers claim, that these people were running around with AK-47s. No such weapons are seen in the video, nor were any found on the scene. Opening fire on civilians is a war crime. So is opening fire on journalists. The U.S. military killed two Reuters journalists in this attack.
I quote from the Geneva convention on civilians.
1 A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A(1), (2), (3) and (6) of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
The leaked footage shows war crimes, conducted on the part of the U.S. No matter what bogus justification you want to come up with.
This undermined the credibility of the U.S. in international affairs. Especially when pointing fingers at human rights violations and war crimes at others. Which, ultimately can be seen as undermining U.S. national security interests.
Assange’s extradition had initially been blocked over concerns about his expected treatment in U.S. custody. In the retrial, the authorities gave assurances that he will not be placed in solitary confinement. These guarantees can be revoked at any time.
The Battle for Journalistic Freedom Is Lost. Western Journalists Made Sure of That
Western media consistently failed to give objective accounts of what was going on in Belmarsh. They did not react when it was revealed the CIA had intended to assassinate Assange. Nor did they think it was a problem when Assange was put under illegal surveillance in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
They also found it more interesting to smear Assange, instead of ever questioning any officials over these war crimes. In fact, they went out of their way to parrot the U.S. narrative about national security and espionage. Suddenly, human rights organizations such as Amnesty got no press coverage, when they offered criticism.
Well, the battle is finally over. The collaborating journalists have been complicit in creating a precedent. Any journalist, who leaks any sealed documents is now liable to the same treatment. All the governments have to do is cry “Undermining National Security!”, and voila! The journalist can now be charged with espionage or terrorism for doing their job.
It Does Not Matter What You Think of Assange as a Person
I know, there are voices that will bring up the rape indictment. I would like to point out that these charges were dropped.
U.S. authorities in compliance with the U.K. succeeded in launching a severe attack on journalistic freedom.
If you even remotely believe in these so-called “western values”, you should be as outraged as I am. If you are not, you have no right to take the high road and condemn other regimes for failing to protect their journalists. Then you are just a hypocrite.
It is this hypocrisy, which enables dictators and autocrats in the first place. People like Putin watch. And they learn from us.
If you only selectively want to stand up for moral issues, you do not stand up for them at all.
Journalists deserve the freedom to expose these kinds of atrocities. Everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, our western regimes have once again proven, what they really think of human rights.