Latin American leaders call for pardon and release of Julian Assange from his ‘unjust imprisonment’
“Many in Europe are following with admiration what is happening now. [Latin America]’, said the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks and a close confidant of Assange. “Looking at the political landscape in Europe, all we have is dark forces.”
Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (aka Lula) has called for the release of Julian Assange from “unjust detention”. As readers know, Assange remains behind bars in Britain’s Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he is awaiting extradition to the United States on espionage charges after Wikileaks exposed Washington’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The British Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to accept Assange’s last remaining appeal against extradition to the US, where he faces a 175-year sentence.
After meeting on Tuesday with Kristin Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, and Joseph Farrell, journalist and ambassador for Wikileaks, Lula’s official Twitter account wrote:
“They informed me about the state of health of Julian Assange and the struggle for his release. I asked him to convey my solidarity to him. May Assange be released from his unjust imprisonment.”
I came @khrafnsson, Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, and Editor Joseph Farrell, who briefed me on Julian Assange’s health and freedom struggle. Ask me to convey my solidarity to you. May Assange be released from his unjust imprisonment.
📸: Claudio Kbene pic.twitter.com/DuSvdEBQQY
— Lula (@LulaOfficial) November 29, 2022
Lula considers Assange’s persecution “a threat to press freedom around the world,” Hrafnsson told reporters after the meeting.
Whistle stop tour
Hrafnsson and Farrell cooking whistle tour Latin America to rally support for Assange’s release not only among national leaders, but also among civil society groups, trade unions, federations and journalistic guilds. Before meeting Lula, they visited Colombia, where they met with newly elected leftist President Gustavo Petro and his foreign minister, Alvaro Leyva. Following the meeting, the Spanish newspaper public asked Hrafnsson, himself an award-winning journalist in his native Iceland, summed up the meeting, to which Hrafnsson replied: “Total support for Assange in Colombia.”
“The meeting with the President and Minister Leiva exceeded my expectations,” Hrafnsson said. “I understand that it is not easy to take a position supporting Julian Assange. We said that many leaders in Europe were silent on this issue and could not speak out.”
Piotr himself tweeted support for Assange after meeting Hrafnsson and Farrell:
I met with representatives of Wikikeaks to support the global fight for the freedom of journalist Julian Assange.
I will ask President Biden and other Latin American presidents not to blame a journalist just for telling the truth. pic.twitter.com/kWyoXrHhyV
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 22, 2022
Which translates as:
I met with representatives of Wikikeaks to support the global fight for the release of journalist Julian Assange.
I, along with other Latin American presidents, will ask President Biden not to blame a journalist just for telling the truth.
In Colombia, several journalists asked Wikileaks delegates why, with Assange’s extradition time running out, they decided to tour Latin America. After all, they say, one of Assange’s biggest mistakes was asking for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012. At the time, the then President of Ecuador, Rafael, was happy to grant his request. But when Correa handed over the reins to his chosen successor, Lenin Moreno, Moreno did not hesitate to hand Assange over to the British security forces.
“The Greatest Traitor in … Latin American History”
This was in April 2019. It is probably no coincidence that just two months earlier, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund and regional development banks agreed to provide the Ecuadorian government with $10.2 billion in bailouts, with many of the usual conditions. Just over a year later, Ecuador eventually defaulted on that loan.
On the day Assange Correa was arrested described Moreno as “the greatest traitor in the history of Ecuador and Latin America”:
[He] allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange.
Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he did is a crime that humanity will never forget.
The editor-in-chief of Wikileaks seems to agree, saying: “From my personal point of view, Lenin Moreno has a special place in the underworld.”
But Latin America is in a very different political situation today than it was three years ago, although Ecuador itself is still ruled by a neoliberal government enslaved by Washington, this time led by Guillermo Lasso. As Hrafnsson told reporters in Colombia, the region as a whole is gaining “growing importance in the world.”
“Many people in Europe are following with admiration what is happening in the region right now. Because, frankly, if you look at the political landscape of Europe, all we have is dark forces, neo-fascists or neo-liberals, or whatever they want to call themselves. It worries. [Meanwhile] something is happening here, and it’s positive… Don’t underestimate the voice of your president. This is extremely important.”
As I have documented over the past year and a half (including here, here, here as well as here) the sands in Latin America are moving politically, economically and geopolitically – and not in the way that Washington would like. All six of the region’s largest economies – Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru – now have center-left governments. So is Honduras. The populist government of Bukele in El Salvador, which is avowedly nationalist and conducts a ruthless, often brutal repression against gangs (street gangs), vehemently criticized US policy and now negotiating a free trade agreement with China.
Since the Ukrainian conflict began, the region as a whole has refused to accept the West’s all-out economic war against Russia. Even countries that have historically been closely associated with the US are now run by people and parties that are somewhat less inclined to US influence and are willing to oppose some of the harmful policies they are pursuing both in Latin America and beyond. Colombia and Mexico are among them.
AMLO leads the way
Since winning the 2018 presidential election, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) has been one of Assange’s fiercest defenders.
“I express my solidarity with him and hope that he will be forgiven and released,” AMLO. said in 2020. “I don’t know if he admitted that he acted against the rules and the political system, but at the time [of their release] these cables exposed the authoritarian way in which the global system operates.”
In the same speech, AMLO stated that most of the information that came to light thanks to Julian Assange related to actions that “were a violation of national sovereignty or democracy.” Among them were documents published by Wikileaks during the presidency of Felipe Carderón Hinojos, revealing many of the shortcomings of Mexican politics. war on drugs (War on Drug Traffickers) and the extent to which Genaro Garcia Luna, Calderón’s Minister of Public Safety, followed orders directly from Washington.
During a September 16 speech marking the 212th anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, the Mexican equivalent of an address to the state, AMLO called Assange the Don Quixote of our time:
From this square, the main square of this Mexican Republic, we pledge to continue the fight for the release of Julian Assange.
AMLO has repeatedly offered political asylum to Assange, whom in June it called “the best journalist of our time…whose ‘crime’ was to expose serious violations of human rights around the world, as well as to interfere with the US government in the internal affairs of other countries.” He also highlighted US hypocrisy on free speech, arguing that if the Biden administration does not pardon Assange, it will be “tarnished”:
If they send him to the US and give him the maximum sentence, the death penalty in prison, we should start a campaign to take down the Statue of Liberty… Because it will no longer be a symbol of freedom.
At the same press conference, as you can see in the second captioned video below (courtesy of Multipolarista), AMLO even showed a snippet of a “collateral killing” video posted by Wikileaks that exposes US war crimes and the killing of journalists in Iraq. .
At a press conference where Mexican President AMLO called for the release of Julian Assange, he showed an excerpt from a “collateral killing” video released by @WikiLeakswhich exposed US war crimes and the killing of journalists in Iraq.
Read more here: https://t.co/qtR2SIOX1j pic.twitter.com/lEQw6F9rrS
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) June 22, 2022
There can be no doubt that AMLO played a leading role in shedding light on Assange’s plight and calling for his release. In a recent interview with a Mexican broadcaster, Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish human rights lawyer who heads the legal team representing Assange and Wikileaks, described AMLO’s unwavering support for Assange as “an example now followed by [others]”.
Western media finally found the stones
Not only Latin American leaders are calling on the Biden administration to pardon Assange. On Monday (November 28), the International Federation of Journalists, representing over 600,000 journalists from around the world, demanded his immediate release. He also denounced the recent revelations CIA plot kill or kidnap him.
On the same day, a group of obsolete media released open letter condemning the ongoing U.S. prosecution of Assange and warning that his indictment “sets a dangerous precedent” that could chill national security reporting. The letter was signed jointly The keeper, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel as well as New York Timesthe five newspapers that first published the Wikileak trove of leaked US diplomatic cables in 2010, and then from 2012 to the present, have continued to look the other way as UK and other European governments at the behest of Washington harass, spy, imprison and subject torture. Assange.
For the past decade, these media outlets have known full well that the US government’s indictment of Assange is an existential threat to press freedom around the world. They also knew that the law used to prosecute Assange profoundly mistaken. However, they have remained schtum, ever since. Some newspapers, first of all The keepereven played an active role in the persecution of Assange.
As Caitlin Johnston notes“if The Guardian really wants to help end the persecution of the heroic founder of WikiLeaks, the best way to do so is to drop the many slanders, falsifications and outright lies,” including his outlandish claim that Trump’s lackey visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, and “issue a formal apology for their publication.
Perhaps, only perhaps, the situation may change in the case against Assange, whose physical and psychological health seems to have lost a lot of weight in recent years. Even the five-eyed Australian government finally showed a modicum of compassion and asked its bosses in Washington to stop persecuting the founder of Wikileaks. True or not, too little, too late.