[D66] Julian Assange’s fate

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/21/assa-j21.html

Ecuadorian president arrives in Britain as Julian Assange’s fate hangs
in the balance
By James Cogan
21 July 2018

Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno arrives in London today, with his
administration seeking to force WikiLeaks editor and Australian citizen
Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy there, where he sought and
was granted political asylum in 2012.

If Assange leaves the embassy he will be imprisoned by Britain for
breaching bail and almost certainly face an application to extradite him
to the United States to stand trial on manufactured charges of espionage.

On the Moreno government’s orders, the Ecuadorian embassy in London has
deprived Assange of all external communication, and all visitors apart
from his lawyers, since March 28.

After six years of confinement due to the British threat of immediate
arrest if he sets foot outside the small building, Assange’s health has
been seriously compromised. The deprivation of communication is a
vindictive attempt to add immense psychological pressure on him to leave
the embassy, as well as to silence him while lurid accusations permeate
the American and international media that WikiLeaks was part of a
nefarious Russian conspiracy to “interfere” in the 2016 US presidential
election.

Ahead of Moreno’s visit to London, his national secretary of political
management, Paul Granda, asserted on July 19 that “there is no specific
meeting planned on Assange.” The same day, acting Ecuadorian foreign
minister, Andres Teran, claimed that Moreno’s government is “not in
talks with the United States” over the WikiLeaks editor.

These statements have no credibility. All evidence points to the
opposite conclusion: A conspiracy is well advanced, involving the US,
British, Ecuadorian and Australian governments, to have Assange hauled
before a show trial in the US.

The American intelligence agencies are determined to prosecute Assange
as a “spy.” The campaign to arrest him was escalated to a “priority” in
April 2017, after WikiLeaks began publishing the “Vault 7” leaks that
revealed how the CIA had developed malware to hack phones, PCs, servers,
smart televisions and vehicle computer systems in every part of the world.

Moreno’s government has betrayed Assange as part of its venal attempts,
on behalf of the Ecuadorian business elite, to restore economic and
political relations with Washington. The London embassy cut off
Assange’s communications just one day after top-level meetings in
Ecuador with representatives of US Southern Command on re-establishing
military cooperation.

Underscoring Moreno’s complicity in the persecution of Assange, his
aides announced he has no intention of visiting the embassy whilst in
London to even check on the well-being of a persecuted journalist his
government is nominally providing political asylum.

Yesterday, Margarita Simonyan, the editor of Russia Today, tweeted: “My
sources say that Assange will be handed over to UK authorities in the
coming weeks or even days…”

Whether Simonyan’s sources are credible is unknown. But the fact that
Moreno will speak with leading figures in the Conservative government of
Prime Minister Theresa May over the coming days is not.

The UK-Ecuadorian talks will take place amid total hysteria in the
American political and media establishment, following Trump’s meeting
with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki this week, over purported Russian
“meddling” and “interference.”

At the centre of the allegations is the July 2016 publication by
WikiLeaks of a trove of emails sent by the Democratic National Committee
(DNC), revealing that ostensibly impartial party officials conspired to
undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign against Hillary Clinton in the
Democratic Party primaries.

The information outraged millions of Sanders’ supporters, especially
young people who had voted for the Vermont senator due to his claims to
be a “democratic socialist” and to oppose the “billionaires.” Top DNC
officials were forced to resign in disgrace for their attempt to
manipulate and rig the primaries for Clinton’s benefit.

History, however, has since been rewritten by the Democratic Party, the
American media and the US intelligence agencies. The DNC leaks were
instead transformed into purported “evidence” of a Russian-orchestrated
attempt to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in favour of Donald
Trump. WikiLeaks and Assange were accused of being accomplices of the
Putin regime.

On January 6, 2017, the US Office of National Intelligence alleged: “We
assess with high confidence that the GRU [Russian General Staff Main
Intelligence Directorate] relayed material it acquired from the DNC and
senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose
WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity.”

Claims of Russian “fake news” and “meddling” also have been used to
justify the sweeping and ongoing campaign to censor oppositional
publications on the Internet, including WikiLeaks and the World
Socialist Web Site. At the same time, the assertions of Russian
“interference” have been used to stoke a frenzy of demands in the
American establishment for a stepped-up economic and military
confrontation with Russia, threatening to trigger war between
nuclear-armed states.

The allegation that Assange is a “Russian agent” is crucial to both the
assault on freedom of speech and democratic rights, and to the
preparations for war.

A media organisation cannot be prosecuted for publishing leaks. So, in
November 2010, Vice President Joe Biden labelled Assange a “high-tech
terrorist.” In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of
state, branded WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence agency.”

If Assange were charged as a Russian spy, it would establish a
far-reaching precedent. International media organisations and
journalists that publish leaked information could be pursued and
prosecuted without recourse to any constitutional and legal protections
of freedom of speech.

The slander of Assange as a Russian tool serves definite ideological
purposes. It has been seized upon internationally by the ex-liberal and
pseudo-left milieu in the media and political establishment to align
with US imperialism, the Democratic Party and the American intelligence
agencies and justify their refusal to defend WikiLeaks and democratic
rights.

The truth is that, regardless of the source, WikiLeaks published
information that was both newsworthy and further clarified people as to
the corrupt, militarist and big business character of the Democratic
Party and its candidate Clinton. Any genuine media organisation that
received such leaks would have published them.

The immense danger Assange faces was underscored yesterday by comments
made during a media conference held by UK Foreign Affairs Secretary
Jeremy Hunt and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who is in
Britain at the same time as Moreno.

Hunt gloated: “Serious charges have been laid against him [Assange] and
we want him to face justice for those charges but we are a country of
due process. At any time he wants to, he is free to walk out on to the
streets of Knightsbridge and the British police will have a warm welcome
for him.”

Bishop exuded the utter contempt of successive Australian governments
for the rights of an Australian citizen and journalist being persecuted
by the US. She indifferently responded to Hunt’s threats, effectively
washing her government’s hands of Assange’s fate. She told the media:
“We understand there are still matters where Mr Assange is subject to
British legal proceedings so therefore that would be a matter of British
law enforcement authorities and agencies.”

In fact, the only “charges” that Assange faces in Britain arise from
breaching bail when he sought asylum, a necessary step to avoid a
sinister warrant to extradite him to Sweden to answer “questions”
relating to dubious allegations of sexual assault. He rightly feared
being extradited from Sweden to the US.

No charges were ever laid by Swedish prosecutors, who finally agreed to
question him in London in December 2016. Sweden abandoned the bogus
investigation in April 2017, yet the British authorities and courts
refused to drop the now-redundant alleged bail offences.

The only “serious charges” against Assange are likely to be
espionage-related charges in the United States, which could result in
life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

The ongoing motive behind the persecution of Assange is to terrorise and
intimidate whistleblowers and independent media organisations into
remaining silent on imperialist war crimes and intrigues, corporate
abuses and corruption, and US-led war preparations.

All defenders of media freedom and democratic rights must step up the
fight to demand the unconditional right of Julian Assange to leave the
London embassy and the UK unhindered and return to Australia, if he
chooses to do so, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

The author also recommends:

The Turnbull government must act to repatriate Australian citizen Julian
Assange to Australia
[19 June 2018]

The Campaign to Free Julian Assange