[Peace-discuss] Amnesty International declares Julian Assange "not a prisoner of conscience"

Thu May 23 17:42:42 UTC 2019

Francis,

You should write an article detailing how Amnesty International has become a
tool of UK and US foreign policy.

Amnesty International declares Julian Assange "not a prisoner of conscience"

May 23, 2019

Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post. Be sure to share it
widely.

  _____  

<https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Authornames1Laura
Tiernan.jpg>
https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Authornames1LauraT
iernan.jpg

<https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Julian-assange.jp
g>
https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Julian-assange.jpg

Assange: By judicial harassment, technical blockages, banking boycotts, and
extra-legal procedures, the Empire has substantively reduced Wikileaks'
ability to conduct business. But now they need to set an example.

LIBERAL BETRAYALS DEPT.-

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a multi-award-winning investigative
journalist and publisher, is locked up in HM Prison Belmarsh in London in
solitary confinement. US extradition proceedings have begun. If extradited,
he will face charges under the Espionage Act for publishing information that
exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The charges being prepared by the US Department of Justice carry the death
penalty.

Chelsea Manning, who courageously blew the whistle on US atrocities by
giving information to WikiLeaks, endured seven years of torture in a
military prison and was jailed again last week for refusing to testify
against Assange.

But according to Amnesty International (AI), neither Assange nor Manning are
"prisoners of conscience" and their defence is not being actively pursued by
the human rights charity.

In a letter to the Julian Assange Defence Committee (JADC) on May 17,
Amnesty International UK declared, "Julian Assange's case is a case we're
monitoring closely but not actively working on. Amnesty International does
not consider Julian Assange to be a Prisoner of Conscience."

  _____  

Amnesty International's abject behaviour is emblematic of liberalism's
cowardly and stealthy colaboration with the global imperialist system. The
betrayal of Assange, and free speech (as seen among Democrats) is hardly
news to those who understand the nature of liberalism and its thick web of
goody-two-shoes organisations pretending to stand in opposition to state
criminality. Assange and the Syrian war are a litmus test separating real
from phony progressives.-Ed.

AI's curtly worded letter followed an urgent appeal by Maxine Walker on
behalf of the JADC. Her letter drew attention to multiple human rights
violations against Assange. "We cannot state strongly enough that Julian
Assange is in great peril", she wrote.

Walker cited AI's April 11 statement that "Assange should not be extradited
or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, where there are concerns that
he would face a real risk of serious human rights violations due to his work
with Wikileaks."

Since then, Walker challenged, "no further statements appear to have been
made by you. His name appears not to have been mentioned in your material
for World Press Freedom Day, an extraordinary omission given his current
situation and that Julian Assange was awarded the 2009 Amnesty International
UK Media Award for New Media."

Her letter continued: "The UK government has ignored, indeed poured scorn,
on the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention 2015 ruling that 'the
deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange is arbitrary and in contravention of
articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights'."

The UN Working Group, Walker pointed out, had described Assange's
imprisonment in Belmarsh as having "furthered the arbitrary deprivation of
liberty of Mr. Assange." They judged his 50-week sentence in a supermax
prison had "contravene[d] the principles of necessity and proportionality
envisaged by the human rights standards."

Walker's letter concluded, "It is urgent that organisations concerned with
human rights should become more vocal and active on this case. One statement
is not adequate to deal with the threats to Julian Assange and the wider
implications for free speech, freedom of information and the protection of
journalists."

AI's two-paragraph reply was received by Walker three days later. It linked
to a statement by AI's Deputy Director for Research for Europe, Massimo
Moratti, published on May 13, supporting Sweden's reopening of "preliminary
investigations" into fabricated "rape" allegations against Assange.
Headlined, "Julian Assange rape allegations must be treated with utmost
seriousness," Moretti declared, "It is vital that the allegations against
Julian Assange are properly investigated in a way that respects the rights
of both the complainant and the person under investigation."

This is a travesty.

For nearly nine years, bogus "rape" and "sexual molestation" allegations
against Assange have been wielded by Sweden and Britain to smear the
WikiLeaks founder and secure his extradition to the US. Assange was always
willing to travel to Sweden to answer the allegations against him, but
Swedish authorities refused to guarantee against his onward extradition
under fast-track "temporary surrender" arrangements in place with the US. It
was the threat of US extradition which forced Assange to seek political
asylum in Ecuador.

Assange has already been questioned by Swedish police and prosecutors-in
August 2010 in Stockholm and at Ecuador's embassy in London in November
2016. On both occasions, the preliminary investigation was closed with not a
single charge laid. Under Swedish law, Assange can be charged prior to an
extradition request. Yet even now, Sweden has submitted no charges and is
seeking a European Arrest Warrant for blatantly political objectives.

AI deliberately conceals the political context of Assange and Manning's
incarceration: international geopolitics, illegal wars of occupation, regime
change, assassination threats by US politicians against Assange-none of this
exists. Having pointed to Sweden, AI simply states that it does not regard
the world's most persecuted journalist a Prisoner of Conscience. It believes
he, "should not be extradited to the USA, where he faces a real risk of
serious human rights violations. due to his work with Wikileaks." It's just
that they are not "actively" pursuing the case.

AI seizes on the Swedish allegations as a pretext to wash its hands of
Assange, but what of Manning? The World Socialist Web Site contacted AI on
Tuesday to ask why it had also refused to list Manning as a Prisoner of
Conscience. AI's UK press officer contacted their US office before
explaining via email that "detention for not testifying before a grand jury
is not itself illegal." And neither is chopping off heads in Saudi Arabia,
which has not prevented AI from actively campaigning on that issue.

AI hastened to tell the WSWS that "we understand Chelsea's motivations for
declining [to testify] when she has already testified at length on these
issues," adding that the "excessive sentencing and cruel treatment of her
previous incarceration served as a stark reminder of the lengths that those
in power will go to in order to keep others from speaking out."

Yet they have not posted a single statement on Manning since 2017.

AI defines a Prisoner of Conscience as "someone who has not used or
advocated violence but is imprisoned because of who they are (sexual
orientation, ethnic, national or social origin, language, birth, colour, sex
or economic status) or what they believe (religious, political or other
conscientiously held beliefs)."

Assange and Manning have been thrown in prison because of their
"conscientiously held beliefs" that all people have the right to know about
war crimes, state corruption, mass surveillance and antidemocratic intrigues
by the world's most powerful states. "I can either go to jail or betray my
principles," Manning has explained. "I would rather starve to death than
change my opinion."

If Assange and Manning are not prisoners of conscience, then who is?

AI told the WSWS they do not maintain an international list of POC
designates. But a partial list published on Wikipedia shows the majority
come from Russia, Iran, China, the former Soviet republics and Saudi Arabia.
Just one POC is listed in the United States, none from Britain and none from
France where journalists are presently being threatened with jail for
exposing French military involvement in the ongoing war in Yemen that has
claimed over 100,000 lives.

On its website, AI states, "We protect people, defending their right to
freedom, to truth, and to dignity. We do this by investigating and exposing
abuses where they happen." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
"remains fundamental to Amnesty's work." "It provides the bedrock of most of
our campaigning, and it helps us to hold authorities to account when rights
are abused."

When it comes to Assange and Manning, AI holds no authority to account,
remains silent in the face of outrageous human rights violations and helps
to magnify the government-media smear machine. Virtually all of the UDHR's
thirty articles have been breached by the US, UK, Australia, Sweden and
Ecuador in their treatment of Assange and Manning.

The most egregious violations of Assange's rights relate to the following
principles: Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security
of person; Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Article 9: No one shall be
subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; Article 10: Everyone is
entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and
impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and
of any criminal charge against him; Article 14: Everyone has the right to
seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution; Article 15: No
one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to
change his nationality; Article 17: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of
his property; Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through
any media and regardless of frontiers.

Written in 1948, the preamble to the UDHR states that "it is essential, if
man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion
against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the
rule of law." Emerging from the blood and filth of fascism and a World War
that claimed 60 million lives, the imperialist powers erected an
international framework of economic, political and legal mechanisms to guard
against a new descent into war, social upheaval and revolution.

If the framers of the UDHR sought insurance against recourse to "rebellion",
this aim was shared by those who established Amnesty International. Its
founder, barrister Peter Benenson, wrote in 1960, "The important thing is to
mobilise public opinion quickly and widely, before a government is caught up
in the vicious spiral caused by its own repression and is faced with
impending civil war." It was also important to choose POCs carefully: "The
technique of publicising the personal stories of a number of prisoners of
contrasting politics is a new one. It has been adopted to avoid the fate of
previous amnesty campaigns, which so often have become more concerned with
publicising the political views of the imprisoned than with humanitarian
purposes."

The unstated premise-clear in AI's silence on Manning and Chelsea-is that
the "political views" of these two prisoners should not be publicised and
the institutions of western capitalist "democracy" must be defended,
especially from any popular and revolutionary threat from below. Eight years
ago, Amnesty International hailed WikiLeaks and the Guardian for their role
in publishing documents that played a "catalytic role" in sparking the 2011
Arab Spring, especially in Tunisia. Today, the Guardian is the Witchfinder
General, gruesomely smearing Assange as a Russian stooge and "rapist", while
AI has thrown Assange and Manning to the wolves.

A political chasm has opened. In Britain, all of the establishment
parties-Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party-along
with the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party are ranged
against Assange, with a host of NGOs and human rights groups in tow. The
Swedish allegations merely serve as a convenient pretext for their naked
defence of imperialism. Sweden is the "Pontius Pilate option" for those like
Dianne Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, who declared to the media on April 13 that
"there can be no hiding place from those kind of accusations" and that
Assange should be sent to Sweden if an extradition request is received.

Lest anyone doubt the role of Sweden's re-re-revived "preliminary
investigations", consider the words of Heather Barr, Acting Co-Director of
the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch UK, who issued a statement
on April 16 that should be entered onto a rollcall of shame: "When
WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was arrested in London last week so he
could face charges in the US, it raised deep concerns around media freedom.
Amid these concerns, however, let's remember that Assange is also accused of
rape."

Barr's statement effectively overrode HRW's earlier condemnation of
Assange's arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy, endorsing his lengthy
incarceration in Belmarsh Prison ("UK, Deciding Assange's Fate, Should Give
Sweden Time to Evaluate Rape Case") while making false and defamatory
statements against Assange. Barr makes repeated reference to rape "charges"
against Assange-charges that have never existed!

The political line-up on Assange confirms the central contention of the
Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site: Assange and
Manning's freedom rests on the independent political mobilisation of the
working class. It is to the great mass of working people, youth and all
genuine defenders of democratic rights that the fight to free Assange and
Manning must be taken.

***

Appendix: An exchange of letters

The following is an exchange of letters between the Julian Assange Defence
Committee's Maxine Walker and Amnesty International UK.

Julian Assange Defence Committee

14 May 2019

Dear Amnesty International UK

I am writing to you on behalf of the Julian Assange Defence Committee, which
was set up to oppose his extradition to the USA and to galvanise opposition
to it.

We cannot state strongly enough that Julian Assange is in great peril.
Indeed you may have seen the interview with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief
Kristinn Hrafnsson following his and Pamela Anderson's recent visit to
Belmarsh in which Mr Hrafnsson states, 'It is a question of life and death,
that's how serious it is.'

We are aware that you made a statement after his arrest in April in which
you said:

"Amnesty International believes that Julian Assange should not be extradited
or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, where there are concerns that
he would face a real risk of serious human rights violations due to his work
with Wikileaks."

You recognised in this statement the potential violations of his human
rights should such an extradition take place including the ultimate
violation, that of his right to life.

However, we also note that no further statements appear to have been made by
you since then. His name appears not to have been mentioned in your material
for World Press Freedom Day, an extraordinary omission given his current
situation and that Julian Assange was awarded the 2009 Amnesty International
UK Media Award for New Media. Julian Assange has won many such awards in
recognition of WikiLeaks' pivotal role in exposing US and UK war crimes and
violations of human rights that have taken place in those wars including
torture, murder and inflicting large numbers of civilian casualties.

The UK government has ignored, indeed poured scorn, on the UN Working Group
on Arbitrary Detention 2015 ruling that "the deprivation of liberty of Mr.
Assange is arbitrary and in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights'. After Julian Assange's arrest in
April, the Working Group also stated, ' The Working Group regrets that the
Government has not complied with its Opinion and has now furthered the
arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange.' It expresses concern that
Mr. Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a
high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal
offence. "This treatment appears to contravene the principles of necessity
and proportionality envisaged by the human rights standards."

It is urgent that organisations concerned with human rights should become
more vocal and active on this case. One statement is not adequate to deal
with the threats to Julian Assange and the wider implications for free
speech, freedom of information and the protection of journalists. We would
ask you: to prioritise this case in your publicity and campaigns; to lobby
MPs who should be raising concerns about this case and his prison conditions
(and are not doing so); to encourage your supporters to write to him in
prison.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Maxine Walker

NOTICE THAT THE AI RATS DO NOT EVEN HAVE THE COURAGE OR DECENCY TO SIGN A
LETTER. THE SEND AN ANONYMOUS IMPERSONAL REPLY.

Dear Maxine,

Thank you for your email regarding Julian Assange.

Our latest statement, following the re-opening of the Swedish Prosecution
Authority's investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange, can
be found here;
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/julian-assange-rape-allegati
ons-must-be-treated-with-utmost-seriousness/%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank>
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/julian-assange-rape-allegatio
ns-must-be-treated-with-utmost-seriousness/

Julian Assange's case is a case we're monitoring closely but not actively
working on. Amnesty International does not consider Julian Assange to be a
Prisoner of Conscience. AI does, however, continue to believe that he should
not be extradited to the USA, where he faces a real risk of serious human
rights violations, including in relation to the likely conditions of his
detention, due to his work with Wikileaks.

We hope this explains our position.

Kind regards,

Supporter Communications Team

Amnesty International UK,

The Human Rights Action Centre,

17-25 New Inn Yard,

London,

EC2A 3EA

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190523/938a85a8/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2229 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190523/938a85a8/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 61203 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190523/938a85a8/attachment-0003.jpg>