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Julian Assange and Human Rights
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The fate that has befallen Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, who is now residing under duress in the embassy of Ecuador in London, is revealing in more than one senses. It has laid the hypocrisy of the US administration and the remarkable convergence of opinion between the two dominant political parties about keeping the well-meaning sections of the population of America in the dark about US atrocities in other states and the US mendacity over such acts. Julian Assange has been branded a 'high-tech terrorist' and demands have been raised for his prosecution in the USA. He is not a US national. He is an Australian and all of his actions have taken place outside the USA. His 'crime' is that WikiLeaks has exposed a number of crimes perpetrated by the US Government on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen etc. The US fury over such exposures only proves that criminals masquerading as champions of democracy have no qualms about violating all commonly accepted norms when their real crimes are exposed before the people of the world, and particularly before the US citizens. It also shows that the US ruling cliques are very much afraid of the US people. Meanwhile the Swedish Government has expressed its desire to interrogate him for his alleged 'sexual offence' in 2008. Mr Assange is not opposed to such an interrogation, and his only condition is that the Swedish Government must not extradite him to the USA after he sets foot in Sweden. The Swedish Government, however, is not willing to commit itself to such a position. This unwillingness is itself suggestive. The Government of Sweden cannot afford to go against the US Government and the international war criminals whose interests they look after. One may liken this attitude to that of the Government of India, which cannot afford to ask the US Government to extradite Warren Anderson, the real culprit behind the Bhopal tragedy of 1984, and send him to India. Such a request, the GOI knows, is too costly for the ruling politicians of this subcontinent of circe.

Not everyone is, however, subservient to US designs. The small South American republic Ecuador has shown that a small nation can defy an immeasurably stronger superpower only if it has the right instinct and the courage to take independent decisions. Indeed, the successive regime changes in South America, including the Venezualian and Bolivarian revolutions, have shown that in that part of the globe, the days of the US imperialist superpower and its lackeys are gone. The strong position of the Government of Ecuador in defiance of the US dictate is only a manifestation of the fact that the effective power of the US ruling classes to bully the world is on the decline. The Indian middle classes, which, true to their cowardly nature, believe in the doctrine of living under the umbrella of this or that superpower, may think otherwise, but this is the fact of the matter.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 10, Sep 16 -22 2012