[D66] Oppose the extradition of Julian Assange

[Antid Oto]

Oppose the extradition of Julian Assange
7 November 2011

The decision last week by the High Court in London to dismiss the appeal of
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of his extradition to Sweden is an attack on
democratic rights.

The judgement by Sir John Thomas and Mr. Justice Ouseley upheld the February
2011 decision by District Judge Howard Riddle at Belmarsh Magistrates Court for
extradition, rejecting every issue of substance in Assange’s appeal.

Relying on antidemocratic and arbitrary European Arrest Warrant (EAW)
legislation, the judges pronounced, “The Prosecutor must be entitled to seek to
apply the provisions of Swedish law to the procedure once it has been determined
that Mr. Assange is an accused and is required for the purposes of prosecution.”

Assange has still not been charged with any crime in Sweden, or in any other
country. Yet, pending an appeal of the ruling that is unlikely to succeed, he
will be forcibly removed to Sweden on the basis of unsubstantiated and contested
accusations by two women of sexual assault and rape.

The judges’ ruling amounted to a decision that if Sweden wants to have Assange
extradited under an EAW, then that is what will happen. This is despite the fact
that the alleged offences are not extraditable in the UK and that Assange fully
cooperated with the authorities when the allegations were first made.

The treatment of Assange by the British judicial system since his arrest last
December stands in stark contrast to its handling of the Chilean fascist
dictator and mass murderer General Augusto Pinochet, whose extradition to Spain
under an international arrest warrant issued by Judge Baltasar Garzón was
rejected. Held from October 1998, Pinochet spent more than a year in the UK,
living in luxury, before being allowed to return to Chile on the grounds of ill
health. Pinochet’s defence team included Clare Montgomery, the lawyer for the
Crown Prosecution Service who has represented the Swedish authorities in arguing
for Assange’s extradition.

Whatever the personal motivations of Assange’s accusers—both of whom admit that
their sexual relations with Assange were consensual—their allegations were
initially dismissed before being resurrected at the behest of a right-wing
Swedish social-democratic politician.

Assange’s real “crime” is that, through its publication of a mass of secret US
military documents, diplomatic cables and video footage, WikiLeaks has exposed
the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq
and numerous other conspiracies carried out against the world’s people by
Washington and its allies.

The High Court ruling is only the latest episode in an internationally
coordinated campaign headed by the Obama administration and US intelligence
agencies to discredit and destroy WikiLeaks.

Assange faces the gravest threat to his liberty and life. Under Swedish law, he
can be held in solitary confinement for months before a trial is even held. He
can also be extradited to the US, where he could face charges that carry the
death penalty. US Vice President Joseph Biden has described Assange as a “high
tech terrorist,” a charge repeated by others, raising the possibility that he
could be thrown into a military prison on the orders of President Obama and held
indefinitely as a “terrorist” without any legal recourse.

One need only note the treatment of Bradley Manning, the American soldier
accused of passing information to WikiLeaks, to get an idea of Assange’s
possible fate. Arrested in May 2010, he faces multiple charges including “aiding
the enemy”—a capital offence. He has been held since then for the most part in
solitary confinement, under conditions that, according to visitors, have reduced
him to a semi-catatonic state.

The legal frame-up of Assange was reinforced by a campaign of disinformation and
vitriol against him by the media. A central role has been played by the
nominally liberal press, with the aim of justifying his silencing and poisoning
popular opinion.

The New York Times was one of the original media partners of WikiLeaks and was
allowed to publish the documents it had obtained. It acknowledged meeting with
White House officials to discuss the most effective means of limiting the
negative impact of the WikiLeaks revelations and published a series of
scurrilous articles and commentaries denouncing Assange and attempting to
discredit him. Following last week’s High Court ruling against Assange, its
Sunday edition responded with the cynical headline, “Is this the WikiEnd?”

In Britain, the Guardian swiftly fell into line with the international campaign
against Assange, to the point of editorialising in support of his extradition to
Sweden. Following the High Court ruling, it published an opinion piece by Karin
Olsson, the culture editor of the leading Swedish daily Expressen. Describing
Assange as a “dodgy hacker from Australia,” she called on him to “give up his
futile struggle against extradition and show a little respect to the Swedish
justice system.”

In comments summing up the sharp shift to the right of the vast majority of
those once considered liberals, she cited “left-wing commentator” Dan Josefsson
as having recently admitted that Assange “was not the radical hero he had
supposed, but ‘a solitary and shabby libertarian who wants to tear down
democratic societies.’”

Such ad hominen attacks on Assange’s personality and motivations have become a
commonplace, in the process relegating to an afterthought the pioneering and
courageous journalism of WikiLeaks, which has exposed the high crimes of the
major imperialist powers.

With few exceptions, the political organisations that claim to be of the left
have done little or nothing to oppose the legal and political vendetta against
Assange. In Britain, the Socialist Workers Party has written nothing on Assange
since a five-sentence article in March, while the Socialist Party has not
uttered a word for 11 months.

Back in December 2010, both organisations wrote with the aim of dismissing the
significance of the WikiLeaks revelations. The SWP made a headline declaration
December 7 that “Wikileaks Is Not a Threat,” while the Socialist Party
pontificated as its final word on the matter: “As bad as the revelations are,
socialists already knew about many of the lengths US imperialism would go to…”

It goes without saying that the trade unions in Britain have done nothing in
Assange’s defence. The sole concern of the National Union of Journalists back in
December 2010 was to praise WikiLeaks for its decision to rely upon “respected
channels of journalism including Der Spiegel, the Guardian, the New York Times,
Le Monde and El Pais” to ensure “responsible reporting in the public interest.”

The real role of these “responsible” and “respected” publications can be seen in
their ongoing efforts to denigrate Assange.

Julian Assange must be vigorously defended and his deportation opposed. The
destruction of Assange and WikiLeaks would be a victory for the forces of
reaction everywhere and a serious blow to free speech, freedom of the press and
the Internet, and basic democratic rights.

Experience testifies that this task cannot be entrusted to the supposed liberal
circles of the more prosperous sections of the petty-bourgeoisie to which
Assange himself is oriented.

Even the best elements from this milieu are incapable of opposing the rightward
lurch of their peers and the political organisations to which they maintain an
allegiance—be it Labour or the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the Democratic
Party in the US or Sweden’s Social Democrats.

The World Socialist Web Site insists that the defence of Assange and WikiLeaks
can be carried out only on the basis of a socialist, anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist perspective. Everything depends on a determined effort to
politically mobilise the broadest possible layers of workers and youth
internationally.

Robert Stevens

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/pers-n07.shtml