Think about for a second that the Cuban authorities is in search of the extradition of an Australian writer to the UK for exposing Cuban struggle crimes. Think about if these crimes included the 2007 bloodbath by Cuban troopers from a helicopter of a dozen Iraqi civilians, together with two journalists from the Reuters information company.
Now think about that if extradited from the UK to Cuba, an Australian writer faces as much as 175 years in most safety jail merely for doing what media professionals are speculated to do: reporting actuality.
Lastly, think about the response of the USA to such habits by Cuba, which might invariably encompass passionate cries for human rights and democracy and requires the final vilification of Cuba.
After all, it does not take a lot creativeness to conclude that the above state of affairs is a reworked model of actual occasions and that the writer in query is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The opposing nation shouldn’t be Cuba, however the US itself, which is accountable not just for the destruction of Assange’s particular person human rights, but additionally for a staggering array of a lot bigger assaults towards folks world wide.
In line with the American model, Assange’s WikiLeaks endangered the lives of individuals in Iraq, Afghanistan and different locations, though it might appear that one of many surest methods to not endanger life in such locations is to not blow them up in any respect.
It’s much more puzzling {that a} nation for which struggle killings are an institutionalized pastime raises such a selective stench about exposing sure gory particulars.
After all, footage of a laughing helicopter crew gunning down defenseless civilians at shut vary, like online game targets, does little to assist the supposed position of People as “the great guys.” wreak worldwide havoc as he pleases.
If Assange wished to avoid wasting his personal pores and skin, he may have caught to a sort of imperial propaganda that features as grassroots journalism, a subject that itself has been instrumental in publicizing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the American public.
As an alternative, he’s being held at Belmarsh Jail in southeast London, awaiting extradition to the so-called “freedom nation”, whereas being an actual instance of extended psychological torture, as documented again in 2019 by the UN Particular Rapporteur on Torture.
In a scathing letter addressed to King Charles forward of his current coronation, Assange described himself as “a political prisoner being held by Your Majesty on behalf of an embarrassed international monarch.” He remarked, “You possibly can inform the measure of a society by the way in which it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has actually succeeded in that regard.”
The embarrassed international ruler has actually excelled on this space as effectively, boasting the best incarceration fee on the planet and a powerful file of executing harmless folks. To make sure, home makes an attempt to condemn a citizen of one other nation to 175 years in jail for talking the reality are additionally a reasonably good indicator that one thing may be very, very flawed with society.
Then there’s the entire matter of the USA’ offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a former CIA torture den and everlasting judicial black gap into which the US has sought to cover a few of the human penalties of its everlasting wars.
Certainly, the truth that the US believes it has the proper to name on the Cuban authorities for its personal “political prisoners” whereas working an unlawful jail in occupied Cuban territory will be safely categorized as mind-bogglingly sinister hypocrisy.
If solely there have been extra journalists who wish to discuss such issues.
However simply as you may’t cover the crimes of Guantanamo by classifying prisoner paintings, you may’t cover the horrors of US politics by successfully modifying Julian Assange off the face of the earth.
That is the outdated “kill the messenger” strategy, wherein the “homicide” takes the type of extended psychological erosion, carried out in tandem with a marketing campaign to normalize the concept that Assange ought to be behind bars for greater than an eternity.
In any case, the assault on Assange isn’t just the same old disproportionate imperial provocation. Regardless of the finish end result, it has already set a harmful precedent for criminalizing not solely freedom of speech and the press, however, if you consider it, freedom of thought.
Whereas Australian officers are more and more clamoring for Assange’s launch, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to say whether or not he would talk about the difficulty with US President Joe Biden on the 4 Leaders Summit in Sydney on Might 24.
And because the everlasting wars of the USA rage increasingly more out of sight, so too does the everlasting struggle towards Julian Assange.
The views expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t essentially mirror the editorial place of Al Jazeera.
