Home
>
Archiv
>
KenFM International
>
English
>
Tortured to death by the “rule of law”

Tortured to death by the “rule of law”

Veröffentlicht am: 15. November 2019 | Anzahl Kommentare: noch keine

A comment by Rainer Rupp.

Western politicians and the media, who otherwise like to preach human rights, have taken no notice of the repeated warning by the leading expert on torture diagnostics at the United Nations that the life of the whistleblower Julian Assange is in great danger.

In a public statement to the news agency AFP last Friday, UN envoy Nils Melzer, the internationally recognised expert on torture treatment, once again warned that the health and life of Australian Julian Assange was at risk because of the extreme conditions of detention in the UK.

One only has to imagine the hysterical outcry of these hypocrites if Assange were held in a Russian prison under these conditions. Anyone looking for further proof of the corruption of the British and American governments, which so readily teach the rest of the world about democracy, human rights and international law, has found it in the example of the treatment of Julian Assange. There is not a single word to be heard from our Federal Government either.

48-year-old Assange has been in a high-security prison in London since April of this year. Previously, he was forcibly “picked up” by the British police from the Ecuadorian embassy. By chance (!) Washington had just made possible a large IMF loan for Ecuador. The new government in Ecuador has huckstered the refugee Assange in a vertiginous violation of international law for a bulging sack of silver after he had found asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for almost seven years in order not to be extradited to the USA. But the British lapdogs of the Americans are now doing everything to please their masters in Washington.

Assange should have been released on 22 September, when his sentence was served for a previous bail violation. Instead, a British judge bowed to the law and ordered Assange to continue to be detained – until the extradition proceedings against him, requested by the USA, begin next year. If Assange is extradited alive to the USA, he is threatened with 175 years in prison if he is convicted of espionage. Assange had documented as a journalist and revealed a number of previously hidden, terrible US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be naive to believe that he would get a fair trial in Great Britain or the USA. The first evidence has already been provided: He was denied proper consultation with his defenders.

Assange’s publications on WikiLeaks also revealed abuses of Western diplomacy in several countries as well as illegal worldwide espionage against innocent citizens by US intelligence services in consultation with their British counterparts.

Assange has provided the international public with important information that has made us aware of the systematic corruption of Washington and its allies. Because he was telling the truth, he is now being persecuted, as were his whistleblower colleagues Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Manning was repeatedly imprisoned in the US, while Snowden had to seek asylum in Russia fearing of being imprisoned as a “traitor” when he returned to the US or anywhere in the West.

UN envoy Nils Melzer had already visited Assange in May this year in Category A prison in Belmarsh, where he was isolated in solitary confinement. Melzer already came to the conclusion that Assange was psychologically tortured by the British authorities. His then less hopeful alarm call was based on the medical diagnosis of Assange’s health.

When Assange was brought before the court again on 21 October, everything was worse. He seemed totally disoriented. He mumbled, stuttered and tried to name his own name and date of birth. The Wikileaks founder is obviously exposed to more systematic “psychological torture,” Melzer said Friday last week. Earlier, one day after Assange’s trial, former British Ambassador Craig Murray had written on his website (1):

„his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought. Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian’s treatment amounted to torture, even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.“

Melzer also appealed to the UK to “change course and alleviates his inhumane situation”, otherwise “exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life.”. As in May, Western media coverage paid no attention to the statement last week by UN envoy Melzer – not worth reporting! It is as if the fate of the innocently tortured Assange has already been disposed of by the Western human rights press in the memory hole.

“Mr Assange’s health has entered a downward spiral of progressively severe anxiety, stress and helplessness typical for persons exposed to prolonged isolation and constant arbitrariness.” Melzer’s gloomy assessment says. In medical terms, “the precise evolution is difficult to predict with certainty”, but “this pattern of symptoms can quickly develop into a life threatening situation involving cardiovascular breakdown or nervous collapse,” warned the UN torture expert, who also pointed out that the measures he had taken in May to protect Assange’s health and dignity had been explicitly ignored. The British government had acted “in total disregard of Mr Assange’s rights and integrity”.

For Ambassador Murray, Assange is “one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times, being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable.“.

The injustice is blatant. While the US government is prosecuting Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations by US soldiers, including torture and murder, the perpetrators of these crimes continue to enjoy impunity. Meanwhile, Assange’s father fears that the British and Americans are not even interested in a trial. Because too much of their dirty laundry would come to light, it is to be feared that the British and American authorities have agreed to kill his son out of court.

The particularly disgusting hypocrisy of the US media is underscored by their recent attempts to glorify a CIA employee appointed to the White House impeachment case against President Trump as a heroic whistleblower. At the same time, however, the same media not only denigrate the uncomfortable journalist Assange as an alleged “Russian spy”, but they also accuse him of all sorts of other monstrosities. Assange is to be presented to the public as a monster in order to destroy his personality and credibility.

Caitlin Johnstone has identified and refuted on her Internet blog all the rubbish buckets that have been dumped on Julian Assange and are still being dumped.

They are all supposed to cover up the fascist perfidy with which the US empire and its British henchmen take action against disagreeable journalists and against the freedom of the press.

Below is the numbered list of defamatory accusations against Assange that Caitlin Johnstone discusses in detail in her blog (2). It is a long list, because the number of defamations and denunciations with which the mainstream media want to silence one of the most important investigative journalists of our time is long:

“He’s not a journalist.”

“He’s a rapist.”

“He was hiding from rape charges in the embassy.”

“He’s a Russian agent.”

“He’s being prosecuted for hacking crimes, not journalism.”

“He should just go to America and face the music. If he’s innocent he’s got nothing to fear.”

“Well he jumped bail! Of course the UK had to arrest him.”

“He’s a narcissist/megalomaniac/jerk.”

“He’s a horrible awful monster for reasons X, Y and Z… but I don’t think he should be extradited.”

“Trump is going to rescue him and they’ll work together to end the Deep State. Relax and wait and see.”

“He put poop on the walls. Poop poop poopie.”

“He’s stinky.”

“He was a bad houseguest.”

“He conspired with Don Jr.”

“He only publishes leaks about America.”

“He’s an antisemite.”

“He’s a fascist.”

“He was a Trump supporter.”

“I used to like him until he ruined the 2016 election” / “I used to hate him until he saved the 2016 election.”

“He’s got blood on his hands.”

“He published the details of millions of Turkish women voters.”

“He supported right-wing political parties in Australia.”

“He endangered the lives of gay Saudis.”

“He’s a CIA agent/limited hangout.”

“He mistreated his cat.”

“He’s a pedophile.”

“He lied about Seth Rich.”

“He’s never leaked anything on Trump.

“He conspired with Nigel Farage.”

In conclusion, it can only be stated here that the quality media of the Western community of values, which are so much committed to human rights around the world, show a frighteningly unfeeling indifference to the state-sanctioned torture of their “colleague” Assange, while at the same time they highly stylize the so-called “CIA-Whistleblower” against Trump, who is not a whistleblower at all, but has done informer services for the Deep State, as a fearless hero.

But when an unyielding whistleblower challenges power by spreading uncomfortable truths by exposing their crimes, he is discredited as a “criminal” and persecuted to death.

Sources:

+++

Thanks to the author for the right to publish.

+++

Picture reference: Alexandros Michailidis/ Shutterstock

+++

KenFM strives for a broad spectrum of opinions. Opinion articles and guest contributions do not have to reflect the editorial point of view.

+++

KenFM now also available as free app for Android and iOS devices! Via our homepage you can access the Apple and Google stores. Here is the link: https://kenfm.de/kenfm-app/

+++

You like our program? Information on support options can be found here: https://kenfm.de/support/kenfm-unterstuetzen/

+++

Now you can also support us with Bitcoins.