In April, I wrote a column on this page about the global campaign to save journalist Julian Assange from being extradited to the United States. Since then, the campaign has intensified.
In early November, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest organisation of journalists, pledged its support to the campaign at a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels.
The event heard testimonies and expert statements on the case which speakers, including IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger, said could have serious implications for the rights of journalists.
In his speech, Bellanger recalled that the IFJ considers Julian’s arrest an attack on press freedom, international law, and the right of asylum, because he revealed only the truth. The dissemination of information of public interest cannot be considered a crime, he emphasised. On November 28, a strong Committee to Defend Julian Assange, comprising human rights lawyers, academic researchers, prominent journalists and human rights activists, organised a heavily attended public meeting in a church hall to discuss and debate the ways and means with which to legally make it possible for Julian’s release from the maximum security Bellmarsh prison in London.
Assange has been in and out of prison for the past 10 years. He has suffered psychological torture, and now he is on a suicide watch. The WikiLeaks director is accused of disclosing diplomatic files. The US has levelled further 17 spurious indictments against him of “espionage”. He has repeatedly denied these allegations and says: “One of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.”
His supporters claim that he is being charged not because he has done anything wrong but what he has done right. Julian is not an American citizen and he was not working in the United States. The US government has no jurisdiction over him. If he is extradited, he faces 175 years in prison and torture for exposing war crimes of the US and Nato armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The information made available by WikiLeaks has enabled people in many countries to hold powerful elite to account. The public around the world is only now beginning to understand what is really involved. It is not the person but the politics behind it.
The whole idea of freedom of speech and holding the corrupt politicians to account is at stake. If journalists such as Assange are forced to be eliminated by hooks or by crooks and any would-be whistleblowers are discouraged and intimidated then what would be the meaning of investigative journalism?
The internationally renowned Australian journalist and film maker John Pilger met him in prison on November 28, the same day as the public meeting was held, and reported in the evening that Assange did not look normal.
A strong media propaganda demonising him and exposing him for several years to severe forms of degrading treatment must have had punishingly dehumanising effect on him.
Julian has never been charged with any offence relating to events in Sweden. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Melzer, identified more than 50 serious irregularities with the case and has called for investigation in Sweden and the US. He said that he had visited him in prison on May 31 along with two doctors and then saw “all the symptoms of progressively severe forms of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture”.
He expressed alarm saying his life is now at risk. Julian’s character assassination and smearing him by the mainstream media has been thorough, coinciding with the British and American foreign policy aims without the presence of whistleblowers now or in future.
Most people are afraid or reluctant to speak out about his treatment, but the two most dedicated supporters, among others, Craig Murray, the former British ambassador and John Pilger have relentlessly protested over many years against Julian’s illegal incarceration.
The writer is a London-based journalist
Email: n-shah@sky.com
from The News International - Opinion https://ift.tt/2ZioJDP
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