The World vs Julian Assange -- Part Two: Persecution

In part one, we looked at the rise of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, and how the two have done tremendously important work to create transparency and hold powerful governments accountable for their lies and atrocities. But Assange has not only set his sights on criminal governments; he has also dragged massive corporations into the sunlight to expose them for their crimes against humanity. A 2009 Minton report examining the waste dumping practices of Trafigura, a multinational oil trading firm, was initially suppressed but then leaked to Assange. The report detailed how the firm was dumping its toxic waste on the Ivory Coast in violation of EU regulations. As a result, approximately 109,000 Africans were affected by the chemical constituents, the harms of which include nausea, breathing problems, diarrhea, vomiting, skin burns, eyesight damage, and sometimes death.

           

The firm did this because they knew they could act with impunity, and they don’t give a fuck about Africa or any of the people who live there. Why should they? They rake in billions of dollars at the expense of everyone else, and they are still chugging along today despite the scandal. After the news broke from WikiLeaks, other outlets began picking up the story, but not before Trafigura had something to say about it. They sued the BBC for libel and managed to get a gag order placed on the Guardian and the UK Times. When a British MP mentioned the Minton report later on, they even tried to crack down on Parliamentary reporting on the issue. It says something about our system when corporations can use their unrivaled financial power to silence even the most mainstream media outlets from exposing the truth.

           

In 2002, an employee at Julius Baer, a Swiss banking firm that primarily functions as an asset management company for ultra-wealthy investors, leaked personal information about a number of the bank’s richest clients. The data, collected between 1997 and 2002, revealed that they were not paying taxes. In the light of this revelation, German authorities began an investigation into the tax evasion, which led to millions of dollars being paid to the government as compensation.

           

That battle was won by Assange, but the war against the banks raged on years later. An extrajudicial financial embargo in 2010 was imposed on WikiLeaks by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and the Bank of America explicitly in response to its publications. This blockade lasted two years, successfully cutting off 95% of all contributions to Assange’s website until he won the legal battle to remove the restriction.

Documents from the European Commission released ironically by WikiLeaks showed that U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Peter King were both directly involved in perpetuating the blockade. Lieberman attempted to prosecute the New York Times for espionage in connection with the WikiLeaks releases, and King tried to designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization, have its staff listed as 'enemy combatants', and have WikiLeaks put on a U.S. Treasury blacklist. When their efforts failed, they settled for the extrajudicial proceedings.

           

Perhaps the most famous of WikiLeaks’ reporting is the hacked emails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman. They revealed many embarrassing insights into the campaign, such as the conference Clinton had with Goldman Sachs in 2013 where she said she wanted to secretly intervene in Syria, the collusion between her campaign staff and the DNC to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and the disclosure of questions to Clinton by CNN prior to a town hall meeting. Podesta has claimed that Russians hacked into the DNC servers, but Julian Assange has stated that this is false.

John Podesta

In August of 2010, two women came forward and accused Assange of rape and molestation, claims that he has fervently denied. The incidents allegedly took place in Sweden, where an international arrest warrant was put out on Assange. He then turned himself into the London police, who granted him conditional bail.

           

In May of 2012 after a laborious battle of appeals and hearings, the UK Supreme Court ruled that extradition of Assange to Stockholm was lawful, despite his vociferous protests that such an action would violate his human rights. This odd objection would not have had any merit in a normal extradition hearing, but this was not a normal extradition hearing. He feared that if he was to be extradited to Sweden, then he would subsequently be extradited to the U.S. to be punished for publishing all of the state secrets that he did, such as the diplomatic cables and war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan among many other revelations, particularly about the CIA.

           

This fear was well-grounded just by the fact that Assange had effectively made himself an enemy of the state, but new reasons for him to be afraid have surfaced since then. In a meeting with other Officials in 2010, Hillary Clinton allegedly asked, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

Referring to Assange. Clinton was said to be fuming about his releasing of State Department cables that she had signed. And more recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said to interviewers in 2017 that arresting Assange was a priority, and then CIA Director Mike Pompeo said, “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia…Julian Assange has no first amendment freedoms.” Just last June, Vice President Mike Pence met with the Ecuadorian President to discuss Assange after being pressured by Senate Democrats to raise the issue.

Clinton/Assange

So with no options left, Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June of 2012 and requested political asylum, making a public statement from the balcony soon after, calling for the U.S. government to “renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks.”

Over six years later, Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Most of that time has been spent running WikiLeaks remotely with the help of its staff, greeting visitors such as Noam Chomsky, John Cusack, and Jesse Jackson from the balcony, and fighting to get the charges against him dropped. He reportedly told Representative Rohrabacher that he would release the information relating to the Russian hack if his safety was guaranteed after leaving the embassy, but that task is nearly impossible for one congressman to accomplish. Now the world is waiting to see what kind of ace he has up his sleeve.

           

In May of 2017, Swedish prosecutors dropped the last of the rape charges due to the statute of limitations. However, Assange was still threatened by the London police because he breached his bail conditions by entering the embassy in 2012. This one charge is the only barrier keeping him imprisoned, and despite a UN Working Group declaring that his “deprivation of liberty” is an arbitrary detention, the UK authorities show no sign of backing off.

           

Just last month Greg Barns, a member of Assange’s legal team, stated that his health could deteriorate to a life-threatening point if he does not receive medical attention. This comes following numerous reports since the first year of his detention that he was suffering from a chronic lung infection and heart problems. The UK refuses to allow him to travel to a hospital so he will be stuck in the embassy’s office with no natural sunlight or fresh air for the indefinite future. Just imagine being stuck inside one building for six whole years, suffering from untreated sickness, comforted only by the company of your cat, and constantly fearing the looming threat of life imprisonment, death or torture by the most powerful government in the world.

Greg Barns with Julian Assange

The six-year standoff seems to be coming to a gloomy culmination though. Last March, Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet access in response to his public support for the Catalonian secessionist movement in Spain. Several months later in late July, Lenin Moreno, Ecuador’s new President elected in 2017, met with British officials allegedly to discuss Assange’s eventual eviction from the Embassy. Just last June, Vice President Mike Pence also met with the Ecuadorian President to discuss Assange after being pressured by Senate Democrats to raise the issue. Moreno, who has previously described Assange as an “inherited problem” and a “stone in the shoe,” is clearly much less friendly than the 2012 Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, who praised Assange for his dedicated defense of freedom of expression. The previous President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa said the new leader would throw Assange out of the embassy at the slightest pressure from the U.S. Internal pressure is also mounting, with a March poll showing that 75% of Ecuadorians want him to be evicted. Supporters of Assange are watching with gritted teeth as special interests, and state and corporate powers tighten their grip around Ecuador in an effort to squeeze the last bastion of press freedom out of the embassy.

           

In our current divided, polarized climate it can be easy to get swept away by the boisterous crowds lining their respective trenches, ready to defend whatever position aligns with their political predispositions then rationalize their opinions post hoc. But it is most important now, of all times, to relinquish ourselves of our biases in favor of principle. Forget what you think about Clinton or Trump, forget what you think about the Russian hack, and forget even what you think about Julian Assange. There is a greater principle at threat, the freedom of the press, and if we do not pull together in a bipartisan effort to defend it against the tyrannical forces which seek to undermine it then our western liberal democracy will face collapse. The apparent controversy surrounding Assange is not nearly as controversial as it seems from our blurry perspective. Our predecessors already fought the same battle we are fighting right now in 1971, when then-President Nixon prosecuted the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times, and Justice Douglass wrote this statement:

“While reckless assaults upon public men, and efforts to bring obloquy upon those who are endeavoring faithfully to discharge official duties, exert a baleful influence and deserve the severest condemnation in public opinion, it cannot be said that this abuse is greater, and it is believed to be less, than that which characterized the period in which our institutions took shape. Meanwhile, the administration of government has become more complex, the opportunities for malfeasance and corruption have multiplied, crime has grown to most serious proportions, and the danger of its protection by unfaithful officials and of the impairment of the fundamental security of life and property by criminal alliances and official neglect, emphasizes the primary need of a vigilant and courageous press, especially in great cities. The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint in dealing with official misconduct.”

           

Click this link to see the details of the call for emergency global mobilization outside U.S. political buildings in the event that Julian Assange is arrested.        

Click this link for the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s website where you can donate or find related information.