24 October 2019
Julian Assange’s hearing in
London’s Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday was a despicable show trial.
Any pretence that this was somehow a legal proceeding, aiming to enforce the
law and respect the rights of the accused, has been abandoned.
Assange, who defied the most
powerful governments by revealing to the world’s people war crimes and
corruption, appeared gaunt and tormented by what a leading UN expert has
described as torture.
Craig Murray, a former British
diplomat and current human rights activist, wrote that
he was “shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his
hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated
ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he
has lost over 15 kg in weight.”
Murray stated that Assange’s
“physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When
asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several
seconds to recall both.”
In a grave warning, Murray
wrote: “Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest
journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to
death by the state, before our eyes.”
With all the vindictiveness of
the British ruling elite, presiding judge Vanessa Baraitser did not even
attempt to conceal her hostility to Assange, his legal team and supporters.
Baraitser waved away arguments
from Assange’s lawyers, which should have resulted in the immediate dismissal
of proceedings for his extradition from Britain to the US, and his release from
prison. These included the fact that existing treaties explicitly ban
extradition from Britain to the US on political offences, and that the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had conducted illegal spying against Assange
while he was being protected by political asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy.
The surveillance included audio and video recordings of Assange’s confidential
meetings and the theft of his legal documents.
Far from being scrutinised by
the court, CIA henchmen were effectively running the hearing, openly coaching
the British prosecutors. As investigative-journalist John Pilger wrote, the
court was “swarming with US officials, their visible instructions holding
sway.”
Finally, Baraitser rejected a
request for a three-month delay to Assange’s full extradition hearing in
February. Struggling to speak, Assange stated: “This superpower had 10 years to
prepare for this case… I can’t access any of my written work… They have an
unfair advantage dealing with documents… This is not equitable what is
happening here.”
Baraitser contemptuously
declared that Assange could speak to his lawyers later if he did not understand
the proceedings. Neither the judge, nor any other representative of the corrupt
British judiciary, has explained why he is being held in virtual solitary
confinement in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison—despite the fact his
custodial sentence on a bogus bail charge expired in September.
The miserable show trial was
not covered seriously by any major corporate publication in the world. All of
them have sought to cover-up what it revealed: that the nine-year US vendetta
against Assange has been an illegal political persecution from the outset.
Every step of the way,
the Guardian, the New York Times and a host of other corporate
outlets have functioned as the adjuncts of the US government in its attempt to destroy
the WikiLeaks’ founder.
They incessantly promoted the
bogus Swedish investigation into alleged sexual misconduct against Assange,
which was the fraudulent basis for his arrest by the British police in 2010 and
which forced him to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012.
The well-heeled journalists
claimed that Assange was “hiding from justice.” They covered up the fact that
Assange was never charged with a crime in Sweden, and that one of the women
involved said she had been “railroaded by the police” into making a complaint.
The corporate journalists derided Assange’s insistence that the Swedish
allegations were aimed at blackening his name and providing an alternate route
for his extradition to the US over WikiLeaks’ exposures of American war crimes.
All of Assange’s warnings have
come to pass. The entire pseudo-legal veneer of the campaign against him,
including the Swedish frame-up, has been exposed as a fraud. Even before he has
been extradited to the US, Assange is facing a lawless show-trial in Britain.
But the corporate publications
have not reversed their position. The torrent of slander has continued, as they
seek to keep the population in the dark about the dire implications of
Assange’s persecution.
For their part, innumerable corrupt
pseudo-left organisations, from the British Socialist Workers Party to the now
defunct US International Socialist Organisation, endorsed the CIA-concocted
lies that Assange had to answer the Swedish allegations. From Jacobin magazine
in the US, to Socialist Alternative in Australia, they have remained silent as
the attempted slow-motion assassination of Assange has proceeded this year.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, who occasionally claims
to be a socialist, has refused to defend the WikiLeaks’ founder.
The case is an abject lesson
in the rotten character of every official institution: from the courts, to the
media, to the political establishment, including its pseudo-left wing. All of
them are hurtling towards authoritarianism, amid the deepest crisis of
capitalism since the 1930s and a resurgence of the class struggle.
Assange will only be freed by
a mass political movement of the working class, the constituency for the
defence of democratic rights. Around the world, millions of workers are
entering into explosive struggles, from the 48,000 US auto-workers on strike, to
the hundreds of thousands protesting in Chile and Ecuador.
The World Socialist Web
Site calls on workers to take up the fight for the immediate freedom of
all class war prisoners, including Assange and Chelsea Manning—the courageous
whistleblower incarcerated by the Trump administration for refusing to give
false testimony against Assange.
Some 90 years ago, the
socialist workers’ movement mounted a campaign in defence of Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were framed-up by the US government because of their
political activism. That fight, which mobilised millions of workers
internationally, played a defining role in world politics and has gone down in
history as one of the great struggles against state persecution. The Assange
case is to this generation what Sacco and Vanzetti was to the 1920s.
The pursuit of the WikiLeaks’
founder is aimed at creating a precedent for the suppression of all opposition
to militarism, authoritarianism and government illegality. His defence must
become the spearhead of a counter-offensive by the working class for all its
social and democratic rights and against imperialist war.
There is no time to lose.
Craig Murray’s warning, that “unless Julian is released shortly, he will be
destroyed,” is an alarm that must be answered by all defenders of democratic
rights, through an active campaign for Assange’s immediate freedom. In working
class suburbs, in factories and at university campuses, all workers and youth
must be apprised of Assange’s plight and mobilised for his freedom, including
through meetings, campaigns and rallies.
Contact us today
to take part in this crucial struggle.
Oscar Grenfell
