Guantánamo Bay detainees continue to face 'inhuman' treatment, U.N. investigator finds
https://apple.news/Az_89mcD8Qlqzl1GmbHqfwwThis brings up another important point; the United States is also responsible for trying to hide its atrocities in other countries and continues to level charges against people who have been whistleblowers that have revealed the existence of these inconvenient facts and crimes against humanity. Let us look at for instance journalist Julian Assuage who remains in prison in England until his extradition to the United States where he will most likely be imprisoned for life, for doing his job as a journalist and revealing the truth of U.S. war crimes against humanity.
A lifesize bronze statue of him appeared in Parliament Square over the weekend but the real Julian Assange could very shortly be taken, handcuffed and protesting, from Belmarsh prison in London and flown off to a high security jail in the US.
The statue, created by the Italian sculptor Davide Dormino, stood alongside two others, of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, at a rally to remind us that Assange’s extradition could now be very imminent. Manning, of course, was the former US soldier who leaked the damning information that Assange published through WikiLeaks; Edward Snowden waits in Russia to see whether all the talk of the sanctity of free speech in his country amounts to more than words.
The very last message I received from Daniel Ellsberg before he died earlier this month was about Assange. Having risked his own freedom so bravely in 1971 with his revelations about the Vietnam war, Ellsberg was one of Assange’s most vocal supporters, not least because he identified with what he had done to expose what had been happening in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He argued that if the case against Assange went ahead, “any journalist anywhere in the world could now be extradited to the US for exposing information classified in the US”.
Along with Alice Walker and Noam Chomsky, Ellsberg had called on the US president, Joe Biden, to halt the extradition, saying: “Biden’s justice department, which has proclaimed a renewed commitment to press freedom, could end these proceedings at any moment.” After all, it was Biden, when still a Democrat senator, who campaigned against the extradition of IRA suspects to the UK to face trial. He did so on the grounds that to allow it would mean “admitting that the justice system in Northern Ireland is fair – a notion I absolutely abhor”.
Biden could indeed act but then so could our own politicians. Stella Assange, Julian’s wife and the mother of his two young children, said at the Parliament Square rally, “We’re really at the endgame now … we have to free him. His life depends on it.” The Labour MPs John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, and Apsana Begum spoke at the gathering but only a few other MPs have campaigned on his behalf. Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, says that Assange is “being persecuted for exposing US war crimes … a blatant attack on journalism”. Where are all those MPs who voted last month for the passing of the Conservative government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, aimed at fighting what is portrayed as “cancel culture” in universities? What is extradition if not an extreme form of cancellation?
If you care about press freedom, make some noise about Julian Assange
Trevor Timm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/27/julian-assange-extradition-mps-free-speechhttps://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/julian-assange-s-wife-says-it-is-now-or-never-at-us-extradition-protest/ar-AA1cZ06o
