Think about, for a second, that the federal government of Cuba was demanding the extradition of an Australian writer in the UK for exposing Cuban navy crimes. Think about that these crimes had included a 2007 bloodbath by helicopter-borne Cuban troopers of a dozen Iraqi civilians, amongst them two journalists for the Reuters information company.
Now think about that, if extradited from the UK to Cuba, the Australian writer would withstand 175 years in a maximum-security jail, merely for having executed what media professionals are ostensibly speculated to do: report actuality.
Lastly, think about the response of america to such Cuban conduct, which might invariably include impassioned squawking about human rights and democracy and a name for the common vilification of Cuba.
In fact, it doesn’t take a stretch of the creativeness to infer that the above situation is a rearranged model of true occasions, and that the writer in query is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The antagonising nation is just not Cuba however relatively the US itself, which is accountable for not solely the obliteration of Assange’s particular person human rights but additionally a shocking array of way more macro-level assaults on folks the world over.
As per the US narrative, Assange’s WikiLeaks endeavours endangered the lives of individuals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere – though it might appear to be one surefire method to not endanger lives in such locations could be to not blow them up within the first place.
It’s moreover perplexing {that a} nation for which navy slaughter is an institutionalised pastime ought to make such a selective stink concerning the publicity of sure gory particulars.
Granted, footage of defenceless civilians being picked off at shut vary like videogame targets by a laughing helicopter crew does little to uphold People’ projected function because the “good guys” – a façade that’s key by way of justifying the nation’s self-presumed proper to wreak worldwide havoc because it pleases.
Had Assange needed to avoid wasting his personal pores and skin, he may have caught to the form of imperial propaganda that features as mainstream journalism, a discipline that was itself instrumental in promoting the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq to the US public.
As an alternative, he’s incarcerated at Belmarsh jail in southeast London, awaiting extradition to the so-called “land of the free” whereas serving as a veritable case examine in extended psychological torture, as documented again in 2019 by the UN Particular Rapporteur on Torture.
In a caustic letter addressed to King Charles forward of his current coronation, Assange described himself as a “political prisoner, held at your majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed overseas sovereign”. He noticed: “One can actually know the measure of a society by the way it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has certainly excelled in that regard”.
The embarrassed overseas sovereign has definitely exhibited excellence in that realm, as nicely, boasting the best incarceration charge on the planet and a powerful monitor file of executing harmless folks. To make certain, home efforts to condemn a citizen of one other nation to 175 years in jail for telling the reality can also be a fairly good indication that one thing may be very, very fallacious with a society.
Then there’s the entire matter of america’ offshore penal colony in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the previous CIA torture den and protracted judicial black gap into which the US has sought to vanish a number of the human fallout of its perpetually wars.
Certainly, the very fact the US feels entitled to name out the Cuban authorities for its personal “political prisoners” whereas working an unlawful jail on occupied Cuban territory will be safely filed below the class of mind-blowingly sinister hypocrisy.
If solely there have been extra journalists who needed to speak about such issues.
However similar to you’ll be able to’t cowl up the crimes of Guantánamo by classifying prisoners’ art work, you’ll be able to’t conceal the horrors of US coverage by successfully redacting Julian Assange out of existence.
It’s the outdated kill-the-messenger strategy – wherein the “killing” takes the type of long-drawn-out psychological erosion carried out in tandem with a marketing campaign to normalise the concept Assange must be behind bars for eternity-plus.
Ultimately, the assault on Assange isn’t just your common disproportionate imperial conniption match. Regardless of the final end result, it has already set a dangerous precedent in criminalising not solely freedom of speech and the press but additionally – if you consider it – freedom of thought.
Though Australian officers are making growing noise agitating for Assange’s launch, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to say whether or not he’ll deal with the problem with US President Joe Biden on the Quad Leaders’ Summit in Sydney on Could 24.
And because the perpetually wars of the US rage on more and more out of sight, so, too, does the perpetually struggle on Julian Assange.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.