{"id":120067,"date":"2021-11-06T15:03:05","date_gmt":"2021-11-06T22:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120067"},"modified":"2021-11-06T15:03:05","modified_gmt":"2021-11-06T22:03:05","slug":"making-freedom-of-expression-commit-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/06\/making-freedom-of-expression-commit-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Making \u2018Freedom of Expression\u2019 Commit Suicide!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palitha senanayake<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

This is just about to happen, and this\nimpending calamity is not taking place in some remote corner, in some \u2018banana\nrepublic\u2019 under a despot, but in the heart of democracy and between the two\nchampions of modern civilized values; between the US and Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case of extradition of Julian Assange\nis currently being heard in Britain. It has now reached the stage where every\nsingle point of the Americans prosecution in the original hearing in September is\nbeing accepted by the British Supreme Court. This is despite the CIA\ninvolvement by 30 of its officials with Thor Deyson – their prime witness from\nIceland, having recanted on his testimony + a history of being arrested for\nmore cases of fraud. Thus, it is now accepted that \u2018the activities of wikileaks\nand its founder, Julian Assange, has a valid case to stand trial in the United\nStates\u2019 ; i.e. for \u2018endangering the US national security establishment\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there is one issue that\nstands between the extradition of Assange and the accepted international norms\nand that is Julian Assange\u2019s health. In addition to Julian\u2019s failing health caused\nby years of incarceration, there is this recommendation by Professor Koppelman,\nwho is a professor of psychiatry and his evaluation that Julian might, or was\nvery likely, to commit suicide, if sent to the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks\nfounder was present at this trial and his comments were, \u2018The prosecutor\noutlined his case, he canvassed the assurances of the United States that Julian\nwouldn\u2019t be thrown into some dungeon somewhere forgotten. Of course, we all\nknow that those assurances or barriers because, you know, we have in front of\nus nine cases, where assurances were given and then reneged upon<\/em><\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question before the civilized\nworld now is; what is the crime Assange committed that tantamount to\nendangering the US national security establishment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WikiLeaks<\/strong>\npublished documents of political or historical importance that were censored or\notherwise suppressed.  Notable among\nthese had been the mails connected to the America operation in Iraq where\ndrones and thousands of robot soldiers had been deployed against the Iraqi\nforces and  then against the Iraqi\npublic. It also revealed many casualties the US forces were responsible for\nduring their Afghan operation which the US army dismissed as \u2018collateral\u2019.\nCollateral is a term used in war parlance to describe unavoidable civilians\ndeaths but the facts disclosed by the leaked cables pointed that the civilian\ndeaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were in fact deliberate warranting their re-classifications\nas \u2018war crimes\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the most interesting of the\ndisclosures by the Wikileaks cables relate to the chemical weapon attack that\ntook place in Douma, Syria, on the 14th April 2018. The US, French and British forces\nlaunched an attack on the Government buildings and support infrastructure in\nDamascus, alleging that the Syrian government of Bashir Al Azzad had used\nchemical weapons against the rebel forces. Subsequently however an\ninvestigation was conducted by the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of\nChemical Weapons) on the allegation. The findings of this investigation, was\nagain suppressed but Wikleaks leaked these papers that suggested that the\nchemicals used in the attack were not the type of chemical weapons that the\nSyrian Government possessed. Strangely, the attack also did not harm the\nrebels, as alleged, but affected the civilian population badly. All in all the investigation\npapers, though fell short of  naming the\nUS, the allied forces and the rebels they supported,  had sufficient evidence to suggest that the\nchemical attack was the result of a staged act by the rebels to make way for\ndirect intervention by the US and allies.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of these revelations of Wikileaks relate\nto the period of the Obama administration where Hillary Clinton was the\nSecretary of State and the lurid mail revelations that bordered on human\ncruelty, in an imperial mindset, embarrassed Ms Clinton and eventually spoiled\nher Presidential stakes in 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikileaks also published some confidential\nmails relating on the Sri Lankan war in 2010 and those suggested that the US State\ndepartment was fully aware of and was complicit, with the ground situation but the\nallegations of HR violations against the SL forces was a post-conflict\ndevelopment, necessitated due to  war\nvictorious  Rajapakse regime\u2019s close\nrelationship with China.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, it is now clear that the Wikileaks\nfounder, who never leaked mails relating to the internal mechanism of the\npentagon  or about the US  arms industry, has in no way endangered the\nUS national security but  is being\npunished for exposing the war crimes of the US administration. This in fact is\nthe anti- thesis of the basic value of democratic governance that the western\nnations crow so much about. Media freedom is considered sacrosanct by the\ndemocratic west and they often flaunt its absence in the developing countries,\nas being the reason for their lack of progress and development.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally the world powers,\nespecially UK and US, whose abuse of power lay badly exposed, have been\noffended and hence they have imprisoned Jullian Assange on triumphed-up\ncharges. The hypocrisy here is that it is not the national security of big\npowers that Assange exposed, but the insecurity of powerless nations in the\nworld. However, Julian Assange, despite agitations by many journalists and\nthose who truly believe in the freedom of press, has been  languishing in the Ecuadorian embassy\nsince 2010 and then  jailed in Britain, charged with all types of innuendos,\nranging from rape to cybercrimes.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, the mainstream world\nmedia today, led again by the US and British media corporations, do not take up\nAssange\u2019s case but subtly denounce the Wikileaks initiator, as such exposure\nwould entail a sense of cognitive dissonance that would threaten their\nallegiance to the status quo narratives that justifies the world they know and\nlove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a wide-ranging mainstream media\nreporting on Julian Assange, award-winning journalist John Pilger, blasted the\nGuardian for its repeated diatribe on the WikiLeaks founder. The Guardian\neditorial made a case for extraditing the Australian to the US, where he could\nface 175 years behind bars for possession and dissemination of classified\ninformation. Pilger offered his interpretation of what the insinuations actually\nmeant. What the Guardian was really saying was this: \u2018We are the fourth estate,\nthe bearers of true liberal principles, the guardians of sacred rights. Such\nas, the right to suck up to power, the right to invade countries and the right\nto smear those who expose our double standards and, if necessary, the right to\ndestroy them,\u2019<\/strong><\/em> he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The INGO, Journalist Sans Boarders, who\nconsider protecting journalist in all countries of the world, against\nGovernment and other vested  interests,\nto be their primary obligation and in the process they often take Governments\nin developing countries to task for not allowing journalists to be free in\ntheir profession. The JSF even took issues with the Sri Lankan Government\u2019s\nadvocacies to the local journalists, at the height of the LTTE war in 2009,\nthat they should not report the war in a negative vein. Ironically, when  the man who exposed the war crimes of the\nsuper powers is being literally sentenced to death, the JSF is deafeningly silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Thus it is not a case of, Journalist Sans\nfrontiers, but rather a case of, Journalist Sans Selective Frontiers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palitha senanayake This is just about to happen, and this impending calamity is not taking place in some remote corner, in some \u2018banana republic\u2019 under a despot, but in the heart of democracy and between the two champions of modern civilized values; between the US and Britain. The case of extradition of Julian Assange is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}