Think about, for a second, that the federal government of Cuba was demanding the extradition of an Australian writer in the UK for exposing Cuban navy crimes. Think about that these crimes had included a 2007 bloodbath by helicopter-borne Cuban troopers of a dozen Iraqi civilians, amongst them two journalists for the Reuters information company.
Now think about that, if extradited from the UK to Cuba, the Australian writer would withstand 175 years in a maximum-security jail, merely for having accomplished what media professionals are ostensibly speculated to do: report actuality.
Lastly, think about the response of the US to such Cuban conduct, which might invariably encompass impassioned squawking about human rights and democracy and a name for the common vilification of Cuba.
After all, it doesn’t take a stretch of the creativeness to infer that the above situation is a rearranged model of true occasions, and that the writer in query is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The antagonising nation isn’t Cuba however moderately the US itself, which is answerable for not solely the obliteration of Assange’s particular person human rights but additionally a surprising array of much more macro-level assaults on folks the world over.
As per the US narrative, Assange’s WikiLeaks endeavours endangered the lives of individuals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere – though it might look like one surefire method to not endanger lives in such locations can be to not blow them up within the first place.
It’s moreover perplexing {that a} nation for which navy slaughter is an institutionalised pastime ought to make such a selective stink concerning the publicity of sure gory particulars.
Granted, footage of defenceless civilians being picked off at shut vary like videogame targets by a laughing helicopter crew does little to uphold People’ projected position because the “good guys” – a façade that’s key by way of justifying the nation’s self-presumed proper to wreak worldwide havoc because it pleases.
Had Assange wished to save lots of his personal pores and skin, he might have caught to the type of imperial propaganda that capabilities as mainstream journalism, a discipline that was itself instrumental in promoting the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq to the US public.
As an alternative, he’s incarcerated at Belmarsh jail in southeast London, awaiting extradition to the so-called “land of the free” whereas serving as a veritable case examine in extended psychological torture, as documented again in 2019 by the UN Particular Rapporteur on Torture.
In a caustic letter addressed to King Charles forward of his latest coronation, Assange described himself as a “political prisoner, held at your majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed overseas sovereign”. He noticed: “One can really know the measure of a society by the way it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has absolutely excelled in that regard”.
The embarrassed overseas sovereign has definitely exhibited excellence in that realm, as effectively, boasting the very best incarceration charge on the planet and a powerful monitor report of executing harmless folks. To make certain, home efforts to condemn a citizen of one other nation to 175 years in jail for telling the reality can be a reasonably good indication that one thing may be very, very flawed with a society.
Then there’s the entire matter of the US’ offshore penal colony in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the previous CIA torture den and protracted judicial black gap into which the US has sought to vanish among the human fallout of its without end wars.
Certainly, the very fact the US feels entitled to name out the Cuban authorities for its personal “political prisoners” whereas working an unlawful jail on occupied Cuban territory will be safely filed underneath the class of mind-blowingly sinister hypocrisy.
If solely there have been extra journalists who wished to speak about such issues.
However identical to you’ll be able to’t cowl up the crimes of Guantánamo by classifying prisoners’ art work, you’ll be able to’t cover the horrors of US coverage by successfully redacting Julian Assange out of existence.
It’s the outdated kill-the-messenger strategy – by which the “killing” takes the type of long-drawn-out psychological erosion performed in tandem with a marketing campaign to normalise the concept that Assange must be behind bars for eternity-plus.
Ultimately, the assault on Assange is not only your common disproportionate imperial conniption match. Regardless of the final end result, it has already set a dangerous precedent in criminalising not solely freedom of speech and the press but additionally – if you consider it – freedom of thought.
Though Australian officers are making rising noise agitating for Assange’s launch, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to say whether or not he’ll tackle the problem with US President Joe Biden on the Quad Leaders’ Summit in Sydney on Could 24.
And because the without end wars of the US rage on more and more out of sight, so, too, does the without end warfare on Julian Assange.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
