{"id":7009,"date":"2020-10-06T04:16:38","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T04:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmatilda.com\/?p=138533"},"modified":"2020-10-06T04:16:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T04:16:38","slug":"an-eyewitness-to-the-agony-of-julian-assange-john-pilger%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/10\/06\/an-eyewitness-to-the-agony-of-julian-assange-john-pilger%ef%bb%bf\/","title":{"rendered":"An Eyewitness To The Agony Of Julian Assange: John Pilger\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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John Pilger has watched Julian Assange\u2019s extradition trial from the public gallery at London\u2019s Old Bailey. He spoke with Timothy Erik Str\u00f6m of <\/strong>Arena <\/strong><\/em>magazine, Australia.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Having watched Julian\nAssange\u2019s trial firsthand, can you describe the prevailing atmosphere in the court?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prevailing atmosphere has been shocking. I say\nthat without hesitation; I have sat in many courts and seldom known such a corruption\nof due process; this is due revenge. Putting aside the ritual associated with \u2018British\njustice\u2019, at times it has been evocative of a Stalinist show trial. One difference\nis that in the show trials, the defendant stood in the court proper. In the Assange\ntrial, the defendant was caged behind thick glass, and had to crawl on his knees\nto a slit in the glass, overseen by his guard, to make contact with his lawyers.\nHis message, whispered barely audibly through face masks, was then passed by post-it\nthe length of the court to where his barristers were arguing the case against his\nextradition to an American hellhole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider this daily routine of Julian Assange, an Australian on trial for truth-telling journalism. He was woken at five o\u2019clock in his cell at Belmarsh prison in the bleak southern sprawl of London. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Julian Assange, pictured inside Belmarsh Prison earlier this year, in a video leaked to Ruptly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first time I saw Julian in Belmarsh, having passed\nthrough half an hour of \u2018security\u2019 checks, including a dog\u2019s snout in my rear, I\nfound a painfully thin figure sitting alone wearing a yellow armband. He had lost\nmore than 10 kilos in a matter of months; his arms had no muscle. His first words\nwere: \u2018I think I am losing my mind\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to assure him he wasn\u2019t. His resilience and\ncourage are formidable, but there is a limit. That was more than a year ago. In\nthe past three weeks, in the pre-dawn, he was strip-searched, shackled, and prepared\nfor transport to the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in a truck that his\npartner, Stella Moris, described as an upended coffin. It had one small window;\nhe had to stand precariously to look out. The truck and its guards were operated\nby Serco, one of many politically connected companies that run much of Boris Johnson\u2019s\nBritain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey to the Old Bailey took at least an hour\nand a half. That\u2019s a minimum of three hours being jolted through snail-like traffic\nevery day. He was led into his narrow cage at the back of the court, then looked\nup, blinking, trying to make out faces in the public gallery through the reflection\nof the glass. He saw the courtly figure of his dad, John Shipton, and me, and our\nfists went up. Through the glass, he reached out to touch fingers with Stella, who\nis a lawyer and seated in the body of the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were here for the ultimate of what the philosopher\nGuy Debord called The Society of the Spectacle<\/em>: a man fighting for his life.\nYet his crime is to have performed an epic public service: revealing that which\nwe have a right to know: the lies of our governments and the crimes they commit\nin our name. His creation of WikiLeaks and its failsafe protection of sources revolutionised\njournalism, restoring it to the vision of its idealists. Edmund Burke\u2019s notion of\nfree journalism as a fourth estate is now a fifth estate that shines a light on\nthose who diminish the very meaning of democracy with their criminal secrecy. That\u2019s\nwhy his punishment is so extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheer bias in the courts I have sat in this year and last year, with Julian in the dock, blight any notion of British justice. When thuggish police dragged him from his asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy \u2014 look closely at the photo and you\u2019ll see he is clutching a Gore Vidal book; Assange has a political humour similar to Vidal\u2019s \u2014 a judge gave him an outrageous 50-week sentence in a maximum-security prison for mere bail infringement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Wikileaks publisher, Julian Assange, being dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For months, he was denied exercise and held in solitary\nconfinement disguised as \u2018heath care\u2019. He once told me he strode the length of his\ncell, back and forth, back and forth, for his own half-marathon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the next cell, the occupant screamed through the\nnight. At first he was denied his reading glasses, left behind in the embassy brutality.\nHe was denied the legal documents with which to prepare his case, and access to\nthe prison library and the use of a basic laptop. Books sent to him by a friend,\nthe journalist Charles Glass, himself a survivor of hostage-taking in Beirut, were\nreturned. He could not call his American lawyers. He has been constantly medicated\nby the prison authorities. When I asked him what they were giving him, he couldn\u2019t\nsay. The governor of Belmarsh has been awarded the Order of the British Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Old Bailey, one of the expert medical witnesses,\nDr Kate Humphrey, a clinical neuropsychologist at Imperial College, London, described\nthe damage: Julian\u2019s intellect had gone from \u2018in the superior, or more likely very\nsuperior range\u2019 to \u2018significantly below\u2019 this optimal level, to the point where\nhe was struggling to absorb information and \u2018perform in the low average range\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what the United Nations Special Rapporteur\non Torture, Professor Nils Melzer, calls \u2018psychological torture\u2019, the result of\na gang-like \u2018mobbing\u2019 by governments and their media shills. Some of the expert\nmedical evidence is so shocking I have no intention of repeating it here. Suffice\nto say that Assange is diagnosed with autism and Asperger\u2019s syndrome and, according\nto Professor Michael Kopelman, one of the world\u2019s leading neuropsychiatrists, he\nsuffers from \u2018suicidal preoccupations\u2019 and is likely to find a way to take his life\nif he is extradited to America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Lewis QC, America\u2019s British prosecutor, spent\nthe best part of his cross-examination of Professor Kopelman dismissing mental illness\nand its dangers as \u2018malingering\u2019. I have never heard in a modern setting such a\nprimitive view of human frailty and vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My own view is that if Assange is freed, he is likely\nto recover a substantial part of his life. He has a loving partner, devoted friends\nand allies and the innate strength of a principled political prisoner. He also has\na wicked sense of humour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that is a long way off. The moments of collusion between the judge \u2014 a Gothic-looking magistrate called Vanessa Baraitser, about whom little is known \u2014 and the prosecution acting for the Trump regime have been brazen. Until the last few days, defence arguments have been routinely dismissed. The lead prosecutor, James Lewis QC, ex-SAS and currently Chief Justice of the Falklands, by and large gets what he wants, notably up to four hours to denigrate expert witnesses, while the defence\u2019s examination is guillotined at half an hour. I have no doubt, had there been a jury, his freedom would be assured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Professor Nils Melzer, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. (IMAGE: UN Photo\/Eskinder Debebe)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The dissident artist Ai Weiwei came to join us one\nmorning in the public gallery. He noted that in China the judge\u2019s decision would\nalready have been made. This caused some dark ironic amusement. My companion in\nthe gallery, the astute diarist and former British ambassador Craig Murray wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI fear that all over London a very hard rain is now falling on\nthose who for a lifetime have worked within institutions of liberal democracy\nthat at least broadly and usually used to operate within the governance of\ntheir own professed principles. It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am\nwatching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser\ndoes not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I\nhave again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she\nhas brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before\nher.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even\nbefore opening arguments were received.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan of the US Government throughout has been to limit the\ninformation available to the public and limit the effective access to a wider\npublic of what information is available. Thus we have seen the extreme\nrestrictions on both physical and video access. A complicit mainstream media\nhas ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few in the wider\npopulation.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are few records of the proceedings. They are:\nCraig Murray\u2019s personal blog<\/a>, Joe Lauria\u2019s live reporting\non Consortium\nNews<\/a> and the World Socialist Website<\/a>. American journalist Kevin Gosztola\u2019s blog, Shadowproof<\/a>, funded mostly by himself, has reported more of the trial than the\nmajor US press and TV, including CNN, combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Australia, Assange\u2019s homeland, the \u2018coverage\u2019 follows a familiar formula set overseas. The London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, Latika Bourke, wrote this<\/a> recently: \u201cThe court heard Assange became depressed during the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy where he sought political asylum to escape extradition to Sweden to answer rape and sexual assault charges.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were no \u2018rape and sexual assault charges\u2019 in\nSweden. Bourke\u2019s lazy falsehood is not uncommon. If the Assange trial is the political\ntrial of the century, as I believe it is, its outcome will not only seal the fate\nof a journalist for doing his job but intimidate the very principles of free journalism\nand free speech. The absence of serious mainstream reporting of the proceedings\nis, at the very least, self-destructive. Journalists should ask: who is next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
London-based Australian journalist Latika Bourke. (IMAGE: Screencap, Channel 10)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How shaming it all is. A decade ago, the Guardian<\/em>\nexploited Assange\u2019s work, claimed its profit and prizes as well as a lucrative Hollywood\ndeal, then turned on him with venom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Old Bailey trial, two names have been\ncited by the prosecution, the Guardian<\/em>\u2019s David Leigh, now retired as \u2018investigations\neditor\u2019, and Luke Harding, the Russiaphobe and author of a fictional Guardian<\/em>\n\u2018scoop<\/a>\u2019 that claimed Trump adviser\nPaul Manafort and a group of Russians visited Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This never happened, and the Guardian<\/em> has\nyet to apologise. The Harding and Leigh book on Assange \u2014 written behind their subject\u2019s\nback \u2014 disclosed a secret password to a WikiLeaks file that Assange had entrusted\nto Leigh during the Guardian<\/em>\u2019s \u2018partnership\u2019. Why the defence has not called\nthis pair is difficult to understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assange is quoted in their book declaring during\na dinner at a London restaurant that he didn\u2019t care if informants named in the leaks\nwere harmed. Neither Harding nor Leigh was at the dinner. John Goetz, an investigations\nreporter with Der Spiegel<\/em>, was at the dinner and testified that Assange said\nnothing of the kind. Incredibly, Judge Baraitser stopped Goetz actually saying this\nin court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the defence has succeeded in demonstrating the extent to which Assange sought to protect and redact names in the files released by WikiLeaks and that no credible evidence existed of individuals harmed by the leaks. The great whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange had personally redacted 15,000 files. The renowned New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager, who worked with Assange on the Afghanistan and Iraq war leaks, described how Assange took \u2018extraordinary precautions in redacting names of informants\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Q: What are the implications\nof this trial’s verdict for journalism more broadly\u2014is it an omen of things to come?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018Assange effect\u2019 is already being felt across\nthe world. If they displease the regime in Washington, investigative journalists\nare liable to prosecution under the 1917 US Espionage Act<\/em>; the precedent\nis stark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter where you are. For Washington,\nother people\u2019s nationality and sovereignty rarely mattered; now it does not exist.\nBritain has effectively surrendered its jurisdiction to Trump\u2019s corrupt Department\nof Justice. In Australia, a National Security Information Act<\/em> promises Kafkaesque\ntrials for transgressors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been\nraided by police and journalists\u2019 computers taken away. The government has given\nunprecedented powers to intelligence officials, making journalistic whistle-blowing\nalmost impossible. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Assange \u2018must face the music\u2019.\nThe perfidious cruelty of his statement is reinforced by its banality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Evil\u2019, wrote Hannah Arendt, \u2018comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Q: Having followed the story\nof WikiLeaks closely for a decade, how has this eyewitness experience shifted your\nunderstanding of what\u2019s at stake with Assange\u2019s trial?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have long been a critic of journalism as an echo\nof unaccountable power and a champion of those who are beacons. So, for me, the\narrival of WikiLeaks was exciting; I admired the way Assange regarded the public\nwith respect, that he was prepared to share his work with the \u2018mainstream\u2019 but not\njoin their collusive club. This, and naked jealousy, made him enemies among the\noverpaid and undertalented, insecure in their pretensions of independence and impartiality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I admired the moral dimension to WikiLeaks. Assange was rarely asked about this, yet much of his remarkable energy comes from a powerful moral sense that governments and other vested interests should not operate behind walls of secrecy. He is a democrat. He explained this in one of our first interviews<\/a> at my home in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Julian Assange, pictured in the Equadorian embassy in 2014, with Ricardo Pati\u00f1o, Ecuador’s then Foreign Minister. (IMAGE: David G Silvers, Canciller\u00eda del Ecuador, Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is at stake for the rest of us has long been\nat stake: freedom to call authority to account, freedom to challenge, to call out\nhypocrisy, to dissent. The difference today is that the world\u2019s imperial power,\nthe United States, has never been as unsure of its metastatic authority as it is\ntoday. Like a flailing rogue, it is spinning us towards a world war if we allow\nit. Little of this menace is reflected in the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WikiLeaks, on the other hand, has allowed us to glimpse\na rampant imperial march through whole societies \u2014 think of the carnage in Iraq,\nAfghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, to name a few, the dispossession of 37 million\npeople and the deaths of 12 million men, women and children in the \u2018war on terror\u2019\n\u2014 most of it behind a fa\u00e7ade of deception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian Assange is a threat to these recurring horrors\n\u2014 that\u2019s why he is being persecuted, why a court of law has become an instrument\nof oppression, why he ought to be our collective conscience: why we all should be\nthe threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge\u2019s decision will be known on the 4th<\/sup> of January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The post An Eyewitness To The Agony Of Julian Assange: John Pilger\ufeff<\/a> appeared first on New Matilda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on New Matilda<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Pilger has watched Julian Assange\u2019s extradition trial from the public gallery at London\u2019s Old Bailey. He spoke with Timothy Erik Str\u00f6m of Arena magazine, Australia. Q: Having watched Julian Assange\u2019s trial firsthand, can you describe the prevailing atmosphere in the court? The prevailing atmosphere has been shocking. I say that without hesitation; I have […]<\/p>\n

The post An Eyewitness To The Agony Of Julian Assange: John Pilger\ufeff<\/a> appeared first on New Matilda<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1969,1965],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7010,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7009\/revisions\/7010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}