While the journalist [Julian Assange] waits to be determined on his fate, a significant number of erroneous or misleading comments and information must be countered.

While media coverage of the latest hearings in London in the extradition trial of Julian Assange was, on the whole, correct, it once again gave rise to a significant number of erroneous or misleading comments and information.

A hypocritical dance around Julian Assange

BY Marc Molitor

Indeed, before an often timid reminder of the need to preserve freedom of expression, to inform and the right to be informed, several columnists and journalists, in Belgium, France and elsewhere, persist in evoking the personality deemed “controversial ” of Assange – without specifying by whom it is controversial –, or to recall past affairs or scandals which would have “tarnished his image”. However, they fail to specify on the one hand that these “affairs” have nothing to do with the case at the heart of the extradition trial, and, on the other hand, that we now know that it is a question of manipulation of information, even false information, intended to destroy or smear Julian Assange.

It is tiring to constantly have to put things straight, to have to respond piecemeal to unfounded assertions with an argued and documented response, but which often struggles to change the image that these commentators construct of Assange, through ignorance of the file or for other reasons that we do not know, undoubtedly less admissible. The damage is done.

No, Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. He was the editor of the Wikileaks site, a news media recognized as such, including by an American court. He is also a journalist, with recognitions from the Australian Media Association and the International Federation of Journalists. Finally, he and Wikileaks have received numerous journalism awards. He is not a whistleblower, Wikileaks was the disseminator of documents entrusted by whistleblowers. The columnists who deny Assange the status of journalist in reality contribute, volens nolens, to disseminating the fallacious reasoning of the United States, which is based precisely on this argument for not granting him the protection recognized for journalists.

Established manipulations

No, Julian Assange has never been accused, prosecuted or convicted of sexual assault and/or rape in Sweden. If a file was indeed opened in 2010, it was closed later without any follow-up or proof, and knowingly leaving it open and prolonging it without reason was one of the tools of the persecution of Assange. The manipulations in this file have been established, in particular by Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur for torture and ill-treatment, author of a book which we can only recommend reading (1).

No, Julian Assange and Wikileaks did not want or lead to the victory of Donald Trump in 2016. The publication, in the summer of 2016, of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign – all strictly authentic – undoubtedly did not served the Democratic candidate, whose bleak face was revealed. But which voters would not want to be rigorously informed of the positions of candidates in an election? In any case, Hillary Clinton was already greatly devalued by the scandal of her private messaging – other emails often confused with the previous ones by observers, even though Wikileaks has nothing to do with this affair.

No proof

No, Julian Assange is not close to the Russians or Vladimir Putin. This so-called proximity to Russia is a fable, a chapter in the narrative fabricated by Hillary Clinton and her team to explain their defeat (the “Russiagate”, inflated by many American media which have since backtracked). No study has actually come to corroborate this thesis. Hillary Clinton was 3 million votes ahead of Trump, and it was above all the American electoral system which worked against her: she lost in a few states where the Democrats had greatly disappointed.

No, Julian Assange is not a hacker who hacked the computers – of the Pentagon, the State Department, the Democratic Party or elsewhere – from which Wikileaks obtained the documents released. The operation of Wikileaks formally prohibited it.

No, the publication of the Afghan and Iraqi war diaries by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did not result in physical harm to people. The United States has never produced any evidence in this regard. Journalist witnesses called at the trial, who participated in the preparation of the publications, attested to Assange's enormous efforts to purge the documents of “sensitive” information in terms of personal security.

Yes, the American diplomatic cables were published without purge. But… it was because very serious carelessness by Guardian journalists had opened access to these documents to other media who, despite calls from Assange not to do so, had published them before Wikileaks had finished purging them. Some of these reports had in fact already been published, purged, in collaboration with other media. Warned of the problem, US authorities rejected Assange's proposals for collaboration for a complete purge of the rest of the cables. In an emergency, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks decided to publish the documents themselves as they stand in order to alert possible people put in difficulty by this information.

Stupefaction

No, Julian Assange never revealed his sources. Chelsea Manning was unmasked via an FBI informant with whom she had corresponded on an internet forum.

Finally, we will also not hide our amazement at having heard a criminal lawyer, occasional columnist, invoke the “guarantees of good prison treatment and psychological monitoring” of Assange in the American prisons to which he risks being extradited. Not only have such arbitrary and grotesque guarantees been shattered by the criticism of many specialized NGOs, but we also do not see why Assange should spend even a single day in an American prison, and even in a prison entirely short, after having already been unjustly deprived of liberty for more than twelve years!

This double standard from certain columnists and journalists – “we would prefer that he not be extradited but we still don’t like him” – remains difficult to understand. Not only are the reasons for this hostility unfounded, but it weakens the urgent and essential rally around the fundamental objective for all journalists: to absolutely prevent the extradition of Assange. Because tomorrow, it is each of them whose extradition may be demanded by the United States for having published information that displeases them.

Marc Molitor

former journalist, Free Assange Belgium Committee and Belgium4assange

https://www.legrandsoir.info/une-valse-hypocrite-autour-de-julian-assange.html

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.................