Truth defies power and denies dying. Truth survives surmounting odds and obstacles. Despite this trajectory of truth, sometimes, truth appears dying – a short phenomenon in life. Julian Assange’s journey to freedom presents this fact: A simultaneous act of surviving and apparent dying of truth. The Spanish define truth in a proverb: “Truth is God’s daughter”. The daughter lives.
The WikiLeaks co-founder’s late-June 2024-hearing at the US Federal Courthouse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan marks his formal ending of a 14-year legal battle for freedom, as he pleaded guilty. Thus, his freedom was gained. For this freedom, probably, no other alternative was at hand at that moment. And, the opposite party, probably, had no option also other than freeing Assange.
Circumstances Assange was pressed into for years compelled him to find no other option including a perpetual defiance. The circumstance was: breaking down a human pressed down into inhuman condition and virtual torture for years. However, there are opposite examples including Mandela and Bobby Sands, Robert Gerard Sands, the Irish political fighter died on the 66th day of his hunger strike in prison, and there is Hemingway’s famous saying about ever-undefeated man, even at the cost of being destroyed.
The plea – guilty – upheld the following facts: Telling truth is an act of “guilt”. Exposing truth is an act of “offense”. Unwrapping lies is an act of “crime”. Lies, hoodwinking, bamboozling and juggling “should” prevail as liars, war criminals, criminals and petty criminals “should” command all situations and circumstances. Killings, genocidal murder spree, destruction of communities and people, conspiracy for imperialist war and killing of people, war on people “should” go wrapped, un-debated, unexposed, uncritical, unquestioned, unopposed. Law is there to impose this rule of lie’s command. And, none “should” question, expose, oppose, resist any criminal act, be it war crime, be it murder of innocent unarmed civilians, be it killing of non-combatants, if the act is deemed “secret” by a few persons posing as wisest, most responsible, most ardent guard of a state machine engaged with invasion, aggression, war against another country or against people. It does “not” matter the motive of the state engaged with aggression and war – plunder and dominance, if the aggressor tags its flagitious acts as part of “democracy”, “peace”, “vanquishing” a “rogue” state; and the rapscallion aggressor goes scot-free.
Now, no journalist, regardless of where they live or work, according to the precedent set with the Assange case, should try to expose the monstrous acts of an aggressor state, of a state waging war against a people having no capacity to threaten that state. Not only journalists, no citizen in no country can carry on the task of exposing facts of murdering civilians, destroying communities, conspiring to wage war by an aggressor state, by a state bent on keeping its domination, if the precedent is followed. The state, according to the precedent, can convict and punish any journalist or any citizen of any country the state deems “threat to its security”. The former WikiLeaks chief’s case has established this “lawful” precedent.
There shall be debate on this precedent, the guilty deal – it is hoped. Whether this case proceeding and the court’s rule will be a precedent or not shall be debated – it is expected. But, hopes and expectations do not always proceed along logic’s, rationale’s and truth’s track, where the powerful reign.
Assange’s path to freedom moved along the powerful’s irrational path: “You are persecuted, tortured and coerced, as you have told truth, as you have exposed lies and murders. Years from your life would be taken away, as you have served humanity, as you have opposed imperialist war. You would be coerced to plead guilty of espionage, conspiracy to obtain information deemed of national security as you have exposed war crimes, murdering of civilians.”
The WikiLeaks crusader’s utterances in the Saipan courtroom is meaningful, and tells truth as he said he believed his publication of classified material was protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution; “the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other”. But, he was pleading guilty, as “it would be difficult to win such a case, given all the circumstances.”
It thus appears circumstances make and unmake pleading guilty or not guilty. Thus, circumstances work as a compulsion, a machine coercing or pressing down humans. Thus, circumstances conspire to obstruct access to rights. Thus, it appears circumstances hinder flow of justice and truth. How are circumstances constructed or weaved? Who do shape and spread circumstances? Are all these truth neutral? Are circumstances more powerful than the path to ascertain and seek justice? Science of state and law can respond to the questions; and obviously, interests will overwhelm answers to the questions. Assange’s 1901 days in a cruel British prison can also answer the questions. A sentence of 175 years in prison in a land far away from Australia was ready to seize Assange, an Australian citizen.
At the same time, along this pleading guilty, truth has also come out – imperialism doesn’t like facts that expose imperialism. Assange committed that “sin” – an exposure of imperialism. Therefore, the activist was compelled to pay – hounded for years, surrounded by a police force round the clock for years, years behind bar, solitary confinement for years, and coerced to plead guilty. It’s a heavy price for telling truth. Rafael Correa, former Ecuadorian President who granted Assange asylum at Ecuador’s embassy in London, said the fact: The activist has been “persecuted for telling the truth, not for lying. This has been really crazy. Twelve years of a journalist’s life have been stolen from him for telling the truth. The real war criminals went unpunished.”
The Assange saga, in this way, also tells the truth: Imperialism has not proved that Assange told lies, misrepresented facts, tarnished imperialism’s image or hurt imperialist interests with falsification of facts. The acts that Assange exposed, thus, remain as evidence of crime. Truth, thus, braves.
Truth has been murdered – person coerced to plead guilty for presenting truth, and the truth was related to public interest, to people’s lives while killers, planners of killing missions go unquestioned. Doesn’t this mean that presenting truth, trying to keep people safe, exposing killing of innocents are acts of guilt? Doesn’t democracy carry transparency and accountability? Doesn’t democracy stand for people’s life, liberty and safety? Where does truth go if contrary to these – people’s safety, transparency, accountability – are done? Isn’t truth murdered?
Truth, thus, dies in a certain circumstance with a certain equation of power under certain executioner for a certain period. It’s the way the powerful deal with truth in a so-called rules based world order. This happened despite the Saipan Judge Manglona saying the fact: “no personal victim” was harmed by the WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents.
Now, any journalist or any citizen from any country should be mentally prepared to face such a fate with threat of indictment and incineration if some other country or the country considered most powerful deems that the citizen has violated the country’s state secret, national security, etc. With this practice, a precedent in the so-called rules based world order is set up, where the determining factor of justice is secrecy, conspiracy to invade and devastate a country, killing of people without any accountability for the killing business, not truth, not people’s lives, not peace, not war crimes or exposure of war crimes. Seth Stern, Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, made similar observation: The plea deal would not have the precedential effect of a court ruling, but it will still hang over the heads of national security reporters for years to come.
States, autocratic and fascist in nature, governments, swamped with decadence and crisis in governance, ruling elites, inundated with corruption and scared by forthcoming challenge by the people, regularly resort to such gag-tact, and threat truth-diggers, journalists, ordinary citizens, political activists. These corrupt, decadent power-holders regularly accuse truth investigators: National security threatened, information obtained illegally. These terms – “national security”, “national defense information”, “illegally obtained” – are turning cliché in countries. These will turn rotten, having no appeal, validity and power among taxpayers in future.
With rising awareness, taxpayers will question spending of public money for wrongdoings and criminality by the powerful, by the corrupt, for persecuting crusaders of truth, resistance organizers – Why shall our money be spent, a misspending, for hiding crimes, for scaring and coercing exposé? Is our money meant for operation of threat, surveillance, torture and prison that curtail the democratic rights of transparency, access to information, knowing acts of crime? With spread of democratic movement in countries, these questions will take shape in concrete form; these demands will turn part of democratic rights. Assange, the activist-journalist, like his predecessor whistleblowers, has upheld this truth of resistance – truth braves. Epics of people’s movements in countries, history of democratic movements tell this – powerful actors’ secrets are unearthed, and the powerful reach ashtray. In one of the immediate tasks, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia made all secret, imperialist, conspiratorial treaties and agreements public. At that time, the powerful actors turned powerless, mounds of hay.
Mike Pence, former US vice president, considers Assange’s plea deal as “miscarriage of justice”. Yes, it’s a miscarriage of justice, but not from the view point of Mr. Pence. It’s, no doubt, a miscarriage of justice from the point of view of victims of imperialist war – the dead, the wounded, the tormented, the people having a destroyed life, as war criminals face no question, no trial, as people’s lives were demolished, as war crimes face no question while exposé of war crimes had to plead guilty. It’s a “rules” based world order, where the sole super power defines rules, where rules are biased towards perpetrators of imperialist war, invaders, aggressors. In this rules based world order, a person is tortured and tormented, is pressed to plead guilty, although crime was committed by imperialist leaders, not by the person persecuted. It’s dreadful precedent. Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive, Committee to Protect Journalists, voiced this case in point: “The US’ pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers.” The journalist-leader sounded warning-signal: This prosecution will have “grave implication for journalists and press freedom worldwide.”
The Assange prosecution will not only have grave implication for the journalists, but, ultimately, and also, for people in countries. People will not have opportunity to know wrongdoings by the corrupt, by the power-lords, if this precedent is followed blindly and obediently – journalists will not engage with exposing wrongdoings of the powerful actors and the powerful, wielding their bureaucratic power, tag all information related to those wrongdoings as “classified”, “national security”. People will lose democratic right to know, to have information, to know facts concerning their lives, to be aware of imperialist designs, missions to assassinate persons fighting for rights and justice, murder people struggling to safeguard their rights and resources, imperialist intervention and invasion plans. The precedent, thus, shows a part of bourgeois democracy.
History of struggle for a humane world, however, tells threat, coercion, persecution, imposing crippling condition, solitary confinement, as Assange was put into, fail to silence voice of truth, neutralize acts of defiance, audacity to wage battle for justice, for a humane world free from imperialism. All the time truth braves, all the time Prometheus straddles heroically for truth, for conscience, for knowledge.
Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
