[D66] Defend Julian Assange

[Antid Oto]

Defend Julian Assange
9 June 2012

A critical moment is approaching in the protracted vendetta by the US government
and its allies against the WikiLeaks organisation and its editor Julian Assange.

The legal avenues to prevent Assange’s extradition from Britain to Sweden to
face allegations of sexual assault are rapidly being exhausted. On May 30, the
majority of a seven-judge bench of the British Supreme Court rejected his appeal
against rulings that a Swedish-lodged European Arrest Warrant should be enforced.

Assange’s lawyers are expected to seek a re-opening of the appeal before a
deadline on June 13. The British judges, however, are unlikely to accept the
defence argument that their ruling was based on legal points not raised during
the hearing. His lawyers could further attempt to appeal to the European Court
of Human Rights, but that also is given little prospect of success.

Assange’s extradition to Sweden will almost certainly result in criminal charges
and his detention. It would also establish the conditions for US authorities to
unveil a secret grand jury indictment on charges of espionage and to file a
warrant for his extradition from Sweden.

The existence of the secret indictment in Virginia in 2010 was confirmed in
leaked emails by Fred Burton, a vice-president of the private intelligence
company Stratfor. Burton wrote in February 2011: “Not for Pub—We have a sealed
indictment on Assange. Pls protect… Assange is going to make a nice bride in
prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.”

This intense hatred of Assange in US ruling circles is the product of WikiLeaks’
public exposure of the sinister machinations and crimes of the US government and
governments around the world. The website published information that revealed US
atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as hundreds of thousands of American
diplomatic cables documenting anti-democratic intrigues that go on every day in
the corridors of power internationally.

The response of the US political establishment has been vicious and relentless.
Assange has faced public death threats. Vice President Joseph Biden accused him
of being a “high-tech terrorist.” WikiLeaks has had its Internet domains shut
down and its financial operations blocked. Its employees and supporters have
been subjected to state harassment and surveillance.

Alleged whistle-blower Bradley Manning has been detained without charge for more
than two years and is to be dragged before a military court martial in November.
Manning faces life imprisonment for espionage and “aiding the enemy”, as would
Assange if he were prosecuted on the same charges.

The Australian Labor government has openly collaborated in the persecution of
Assange, an Australian citizen. Before any charges or trial, Prime Minister
Julia Gillard branded his actions in publishing diplomatic cables as “illegal.”
The attorney-general threatened to cancel his passport and demanded that Britain
enforce the Swedish extradition warrant. Should Assange manage to return to
Australia, the Labor government last month amended legislation to remove any
barrier to extraditing Australian citizens on “political offences” committed in
other countries.

The treatment of Assange, Manning and WikiLeaks are part of a far broader
assault on democratic rights internationally already underway under the guise of
the “war on terror.” Fundamental rights such as the freedom of speech and
association are being criminalised by governments intent on protecting the
interests of the corporate elite amid a deepening global crisis of capitalism.
The police state methods being used to persecute Assange will be directed more
broadly against masses of working people as they enter struggle against
austerity and the drive to war.

The collapse of any commitment in ruling circles to basic democratic rights is
most graphically revealed by the response of the so-called liberals and lefts.
Across Europe and in the US, this milieu has in the main refused to defend
Assange and many have given credence to the politically-motivated allegations of
sexual assault against him by a right-wing Swedish prosecutor. Among the
pseudo-radicals, the press of the International Socialist Organisation in the US
and the Socialist Workers Party in Britain has aired the view that Assange
should not be defended because he is accused of rape. Concerns that the Swedish
charges were bogus were dismissed as “a conspiracy theory.”

In Australia, the Greens and pseudo-left organisations “defend” Assange by
claiming that the Gillard government can be pressured “to do more” to assist
him. This campaign serves to cover up the role of the Labor Party in aiding and
abetting the efforts of the US and its accomplices to railroad Assange into an
American jail. Such a perspective can only disorient and demoralise the large
numbers of people who oppose the hounding of Assange. The position of the Greens
party is particularly cynical. At no point has its ostensible concern over
democratic rights led it to question, let alone break, its deal to keep the
minority Labor government in power.

The defence of Assange and WikiLeaks must be animated by an understanding of the
political and class forces at work. Democratic rights are under attack by
governments around the world because the financial and corporate elite can only
defend its profits and wealth through the active suppression of opposition
within the working class. Democracy, in other words, is incompatible with the
continued existence of the failed capitalist order.

The fight to defend Julian Assange and democratic rights more broadly is
inseparably bound up with the mobilisation of the working class in Britain,
Australia, the US and internationally against the profit system and its
political defenders. There are no shortcuts through protests and appeals to the
powers-that-be. What is necessary is the development of an independent political
movement of the working class that fights to establish workers’ governments,
committed to the reorganisation of society on the basis of human need, not
private profit, and genuine democracy in every aspect of economic, political and
social life.

James Cogan

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j09.shtml