The High Price of Freedom — How the Trial of Julian Assange Concerns us all
For the last decade, Julian Assange has been the target of immense persecution conducted by the US government, regardless of the presidency. His case may appear confusing or irrelevant, yet it is a case that concerns every single of us in a profound manner. For the outcome of this case will determine whether or not freedom of speech will endure.
The battle began more than a decade ago, when Assange helped publish footage and documentation of severe war-crimes conducted by the US military in the Middle-East. The documents were provided by then US solder, Chelsea Manning, who made the choice to speak up about what she had witnessed. Most notably, footage has been released of US military personnel killing a dozen of people including two employees of the news agency, Reuters. The video can be seen via the link below.
In the years after, Assange was pressured into seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he remained for seven years. This was mainly done to avoid extradition to Sweden, which came as a result of highly suspicious and misused police investigation relating to two women who Assange had sexual relationships with back in 2009. Assange had no actual problem with being extradited to Sweden to face this obviously misconstrued charge. The reason he sought to avoid it was that it had become clear to himself and his legal team, that this was merely a strategy utilised by the US government to have him further extradited to the US.
For more insight into the Swedish case, watch the video below:
After spending seven years in a room of the Ecuadorian Embassy, he was removed from the embassy in 2019. Since then, he has been going through an arduous legal battle to avoid extradition to the US, as such an extradition would essentially be a death sentence. As Assange stands to be prosecuted for one charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and of 17 charges under the Espionage Act, not as a spy, but as a publisher of information. The estimated sentence would amount to 175 years, of which five come from the first charge.
Up until 2019, only the first charge was held against Assange, and recently, the key witness for the prosecution relating to this charge, admitted that he had provided false testimony. Furthermore, it has been revealed that this key witness had been diagnosed as a sociopath, and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and financial fraud. Thus, for most of its existence, the prosecution of Assange has been founded on a completely unreliable witness.
When it comes to the 17 charges under the Espionage Act, Barack Obama had abstained from allowing Assange to be charged during his term, due to the precedent this would set. Nonetheless, his successor, the man who promised to “drain the swamp”, Donald Trump, allowed for these charges to be brought against Assange.
This is the first time in history that a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, and if Assange was to be convicted, it would set a precedent which would dismantle journalism and freedom of the press entirely. Any journalist or publisher considering spreading information that challenges the official narrative of western governments, would then have to face the prospect of spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement.
In Assange’s case, an extradition to the US would entail being placed in maximum security prison, furthered by solitary confinement and severely limited contact with even his own lawyers. Furthermore, his legal defence would be largely unable to conduct the necessary defence, as the presiding judge would most likely deny request for providing classified documents, as has been the case in previous whistleblower trials.
From the onset of Assange’s prosecution, most large news-providers have been guilty of a disturbing level of disinterest, negligence, and lacking integrity, when it comes to reporting on the case. There has been given plenty of room for various forms of slander regarding his personal character and alleged support of Donald Trump, all the while almost no attention has been given to what is actually important in this case.
What I, you, or anyone thinks of Assange as a person is completely irrelevant. If the smears concerning him being an “unpleasant guest” at the Embassy are true, this would obviously be excused by the fact that he was spending year after year in the same little room, which is a form of solitary confinement. Nonetheless, the smears against Assange lack any actual evidence, and rely mostly on us simply accepting their truth.
This lack of evidence goes even further, as no part of the prosecution has been able to prove that the lives of service personnel have been endangered by the leaks.
Assange disclosed the truth about the criminal and horrendous actions our governments have committed in our name, and revealed that our trust in these institutions is for the most part misplaced.
This is what the US government, among others, understood from the beginning, and thus every effort available has been spent on not only trying to make life as miserable for Assange as possible. The goal has from the beginning been to maintain the official narrative, which he disturbed so profoundly.
Thus, while the end goal has been to imprison Assange in a maximum security prison, the intermediate strategy has been to make us all disregard him as either an insane person or a political zealot. And while some media outlets make it appear as being a complex case, it really isn’t.
Our governments committed war crimes in our name, and concealed it from us. Assange chose to reveal this to us, and for this reason alone, he is being persecuted and prosecuted.
The same is true for many other persons taking on the established structures of power, such as the aforementioned Chelsea Manning, who herself has gone through years of torture at the hands of the US judicial system.
These individuals are paying the price for our freedom. Without them, we would not have learned about the numerous war crimes committed in our names, that we are constantly being spied on by surveillance agencies, and that large corporations are both capturing regulatory agencies and decimating the natural world.
If Julian Assange is extradited to the US, he will not be heard from again, and this would be a final nail in the coffin of the First Amendment and freedom of speech in general.
We take freedom for granted, failing to realise that we are relinquishing more of it every day. Every time we passively accept the persecution of whistleblowers who risk their life for our sake, we give our consent to a further tightening of the chains already enveloping us.
Despite what many media-outlets are spewing, the case of Assange is the final frontier for the battle of free speech. Passivity means siding with the governments that seek to get rid of him, and so the only valid option is to show our collective support.
The first step is to dismantle the smears, which fortunately for us, journalist, Caitlyn Johnstone has already done:
Thank you for reading.
