Julian Assange he is buried by the English “Justice” in a maximum security prison. The buried thing is not a tricky appeal to a word that shakes us but a sober description of the cell in which – little by little, hour after hour – the founder of WikiLeaks is fulfilling the death warrant that they have it reserved. The reason? Having leaked hundreds of thousands of documents proving to the press the countless murders, torture, bombings and atrocities that Washington perpetrated in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, something that was carefully concealed. That was Assange’s crime: reporting, telling the truth. And such a thing constitutes an unforgivable affront to the empire that persecuted the journalist for years.
The bravery of the president Rafael Correa (already manifested when he expelled the United States troops from the Manta base) saved him from that threat by granting him not only asylum in the embassy of Ecuador in London but the Ecuadorian citizenship. The nauseating moral disability of his corrupt successor, Lenin Moreno, deprived Assange of both and rendered him helpless to the british authorities; that is, at the hands of one of the most despicable lieutenants in the White House. And there it goes, waiting for what seems like an inescapable ending: his extradition to the United States. There the journalist will be exhibited as a trophy, psychologically and physically tortured to the unspeakable and then, with damn cunning, condemned to a harsh sentence, although less than the 175 years requested by the prosecutor and sent to a jail, where shortly afterwards he will die. stabbed to death in a well-orchestrated “inmate brawl.” In an infinite display of hypocrisy, Washington will hasten to declare its regret for such a regrettable outcome and the president will send condolences to his relatives. Moral that the empire wishes to burn on a stone: “whoever reveals our secrets will pay for it with his life.”
We spoke of Assange’s loneliness in these final days of the fateful 2021 and we described it as unforgivable. Why? Because the ordeal that has martyred the Australian has not provoked, except in London, massive demonstrations of solidarity and support for his cause. It is surprising and worrisome that this has not been assumed as their own by the left and the popular movements that did wage great battles at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one against the Multilateral Investment Agreement – aborted, as soon as its leonine secret clauses were revealed by Canadian hackers – or against neoliberalism, the FTAA, and free trade agreements today are not mobilized to demand the immediate release of Assange. I believe that this unfortunate situation is due to several factors: first, the weakening and / or disorganization of the social forces that fought those great battles, as a result of the permanent attack suffered at the hands of neoliberal governments; second, due to the suicidal exclusivity that economic issues have in the construction of the agenda of the protesting movements, since these cannot be the only issue that summons their militancy. The anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle It has several facets, and the battle for information and publicity of government actions is one of them. And in it Assange is our hero, who resists alone. To the above, a third factor must be added: the nefarious role of the “free press”That is to say, the undemocratic concentration of media powers that never assumed, let alone the defense of a real journalist like Assange, but took great pains to hide the information about the case. The “media scoundrel”, who has nothing to do with the noble trade of journalism, voluntarily lined up to conceal the crimes reported by Assange and justify his imprisonment. In other words, he became an accomplice of his executioners.
Hopefully the left and the popular movements will react in time and abandon their apathy on this issue. Much can still be done to save Assange’s life: from a worldwide tweet supporting his cause to promoting a massive cyber-militancy on social networks and organizing massive street demonstrations in the main cities of the world demanding his freedom and pressuring governments to show solidarity. with the gagged journalist .. There is still time. The great popular organizations cannot and should not be accomplices of their martyrdom. Don’t let go of Assange’s hand, don’t leave him alone!
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