Rule of Law and Raison d’Etat: Julian Assange Must be Released

Photograph Source: Paola Breizh – CC BY 2.0

An Open Letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Mr High Commissioner,

On 20-21 February, a High Court in London will decide Julian Assange’s fate: freedom or death. Two judges will decide whether the Wikileaks founder will still be able to lodge an ultimate appeal, or will end his days in an American jail.

Mr Assange has committed no crime. His only fault is to have revealed some of the crimes of the powerful of our time. Lèse majesté crime!

American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have destroyed millions of lives and ruined these countries for generations to come. No one has been prosecuted. On the contrary, these crimes have been covered up with impunity in the United States. And yet Mr Assange is being punished for having published evidence of some of them. Political justice.

He is charged under a treason law dating from the First World Wn 1917. Can one betray the laws of a country that is not our own? Is American law universal?  To accept it would be to dangerously open the door to the arbitrariness that comes with unchecked power: tomorrow, another powerful state could arrogate to itself the right, under the law of the strongest, to prosecute a foreign journalist, researcher or rights activist accused of breaking its law.

Under international law, depriving someone of their liberty is an exceptional decision, which must be duly justified to ensure fair proceedings. Yet, presumed innocent like any accused, Mr Assange has been imprisoned without trial for almost five years as a dangerous criminal in a high-security prison near London. No release on bail for him, under judicial supervision, pending the outcome of proceedings that are clearly dragging their feet and taking their ease with time – the short time of a man’s life.

Why ? To prevent him from the risk of escaping absconding from a justice, which in his case, is set to fail him. Do the British judges who lent their names to this parody and threw him in jail, like a public enemy, wonder why their decisions are held in suspicion?  Presumption of innocence ? Yes, but he must be punished first.

In the United States, he is charged with 18 counts  that carry a total of 175 years in prison. If extradited, he will have little chance of a fair trial. The court that will try him is located a stone’s throw from the CIA headquarters, in a community of former or actual employees of its services, some of whose criminal practices Wikileaks has revealed. During the special proceding that will be imposed on him, his right to a defence will be compromised.

The villains who have been dragging him through the mud and hounding him for 14 years, thanks to the powerful relays of servile medias, have no interest in a prolonged public trial that would open the Pandora’s box of America’s countless crimes. They accused him of rape and of endangering American lives. Neither charges stood up to the test of evidence.

Others before him who became embarassing, such as Jeffrey Epstein or his accomplice in France, were found “suicided” in their cells in dubious circumstances. It would be easy to put his death down to exhaustion and the despair of a life deprived of hope, meaning and freedom.

None of the European states that preach the rule of law, democracy and human rights, yet trample them underfoot every day, has offered Mr Assange political asylum. To allow the UK to extradite this man without a word to stop it, in the name of a justice that is not our own, but the black robe of the powers that be, is to consent to be an accomplice of his deportation.

Why are all Western states are so determined to violate left and right in his case national and international human rights standards ? Is it to ensure that his torment is made a visible deterrant to dissuade others to expose certain of our crimes?

Mr. High Commissioner,

Mr Assange is a defender of human rights; an innovative journalist and creative publisher; he is one of us. He should not be locked up but standing with us in our office. Is not him persecuted for doing what every serious investigative journalist, every serious human rights investigator, every one of us in this office should be doing every day: investigating allegations, documenting states and other crimes and promoting truth, accountability and justice?

The fight for his freedom is not just a battle to free a man unduly pilloried by our modern inquisitions. It is one of the emblematic battles of our time: the battle of right against reason of State; of truth against lies; of free and verified information indispensable to the exercise of citizenship against the duty of transparency incumbent upon every democratic government.

This battle is also emblematic of the gaping divide at the heart of our societies that is dangerously paving the way for future tyrannies and rumbling revolts: the recurrent confrontation between “we, the peoples” (as the pramble of the UN Charter begins) and the arrogant and desinhibited violence of the world’s “elites”, who are increasingly dissociated from society and for whom the human rights of others – which they enjoy – have become a “has-been” embarrassment. Were not human rights born of this struggle ? History continues.

All human rights and press freedom groups consider Mr Assange’s indictment to be the most serious threat worldwide to press freedom in the United States and elsewhere. Our office, however, has remained conspicuously silent. How is it that sucessive high commissioners have carefully ignored him and have not dared to say a word in his defence?

I did not wait, Mr High Commissioner, until I retired last october, to inform the office of the threats to our rights and freedoms posed by his persecution. I kept the management team informed on the basis of verified information. I worked in my spare time, and with several Special Rapporteurs, to ensure that the UN spoke out and said the law. As my successive memos went unanswered, hoping to reach their heart, I composed and sent to Mrs Bachelet, and then to you, the poem appended to this letter: “A quarter to midnight”. Your silence was matched by that of most of my colleagues. Fear to speak and cowardice, Mr. High Commissioner, reign in the United Nations Human Rights Office.

I am well aware that your job is one of the most difficult among these disunited nations, each of them pulling the human rights fig leaf to hide its shame.

I also know that the funding of this office is political, and that it is the richest states that hold the strings of our purses. But if this office lacks resources commensurate with the challenges it faces – the rule of a just law is everywhere on the defensive – compromising its independence and impartiality for a few million dollars is a dubious calculation. Isn’t it better to have a small ship sailing valiantly on the crests of international standards to show the way ahead, than a heavy liner emptied of its soul?  More than money, the world today needs the height and moral authority of someone who speaks out, above the fray of history and its battlefields, to remind us of the perils of unchained hubris, get things back on track and avoid the worst. But moral authority is not a question of position and can only be acquired through integrity, courage and example.

You only have four years, Mr High Commissioner, to “make a difference” in the real world. Whatever you do, to balance wolf and lamb, at the end of your term, the powers that chose you will spit you out like a cherry stone. Don’t exhange what’s left of the soul of this office, which the world badly needs, for the mirages of an OHCHR 2.0.

Denouncing the truth must not become a crime.

Isn’t it high time for this office to make its voice heard above the compromises and short-term interests that stifle life ? A freed voice that demands, without modesty, Julian Assange’s freedom for the sake of our own.

It’s already late, Mr. High Commissioner, a quarter to midnight…

* * *

Quarter to Midnight…

It’s high time my friendsThat we realizeThat the persecutionOf Julian AssangeIs also our own… 

That he is one of usAnd a pathfinderOf some of the crimesOf these dreadful timesMade in our name…

Hostage of conscienceDetained in the heartOf democraciesWhich show by his plightWhat they‘re underneath…

*

His persecutionIs a frontal blowAt the foundationOf our politiesTo challenge our rightsRepress our freedoms:

Our right to think freeAnd to be informedTo speak and to actTo exchange and shareAnd build togetherWith our hands, our mindsThe warmth of our heartsAnd our eyes openedThe world, which we wantTo live and love in…

 — I say the world, whichWe want to live inAnd not just the showWhere we pass and dream…

*

What did he defend?Oh, very little!

The freedom of speechOf informationAnd of a free pressStill independent…Our right to the truthAnd our need to knowWhat those we electDo in our nameEspecially whenThey use the shadowsTo commit their forfeits…

The right of anyInvestigatorTo freely inquireIn any matterOf public concernAnd protect their sourcesWithout reprisal…

The courage and rightOf whistle-blowersTo disclose the factsThat hurt their conscienceAnd to be protectedBy law and justiceIf they are attacked…

The duty to protectOur own privacyWhich is essentialTo the blossomingOf our true being…The right to fair trialNot to be deprivedOf one’s libertyArbitrarily…

The right not to beSubject to tormentFor having acted inSoul and conscience…

The right to respectAnd to protectionFor daring to speakAnd stand by the truth…

*

Isn’t it what weDo stand for and weDo every dayIn this high office:

Undressing states crimesExposing their liesPromoting justiceAnd hold them to book?

Isn’t it our missionAnd the raison d’êtreOf our commitmentTo keep the light onAgainst the dark side?

*

Through Julian’s ordealIt is our freedomsThat are underminedThe very spiritOf democracyWhich remains the leastOf the worst regimesTo live and work inDespite all its faultsBetrayals and filthIts caricaturesAnd its perversions…

Its myriad of crimesMade in our nameWith impunityWithout us knowing…How many countriesHave been torn to piecesHow many peopleWere decimatedBy this world of oursThat calls itself free?

*

It’s our libertiesThat are under siegeNow on borrowed timeFor how much longer?

Its is alreadyA quarter to midnight… 

*

He has been payingTen years of his lifeDeprived of the sunFor exposing the truthAnd ignominyOf brutal powersAnd laid bare their words…

*

Rather than silenceShould not our officeBestow him the priceOf our true spirit?

Let’s not add to hisTorment, the weight ofOur indifferenceAnd add our disgraceTo his pillory…

*

We have the dutyTo firmly opposeHis extraditionWhich for sure will signHis sentence of deathBy a law that isThat of the strongest…

*

From a procedureTo a procedureThose who want his lifeIn the name of justiceThat is not our ownWill keep him confinedThe rest of his lifeIn a cell of shame…

If he does not dieBefore, of despairFor having too muchBelieved in freedomIn the power of truthThese precious valuesThat institutionsAre meant to defend…

If he does not putIn act of despairAn end to himselfAnd to the non-lifeThat has become his…

*

There are reasons to fearThat he may be foundLifeless one morning“Suicided” in his cellLike those before himWho have becomingToo embarrassingTo the powers that be…

Those who want himFor having unmaskedSome of their secretsAnd their many liesAnd shaked up their thronesHave no interestIn a long trialThat would open upThe Pandora’s boxOf some of their crimesAnd make them public… 

* 

It will be futileWhen he will be goneAcross the oceanOr the river StyxTo cry on his heelsPraise his memoryAnd beg his pardonFor not having reachedOur hand out in time…Julian has no needFor crocodile tears… 

*

In the lone descentOf his dark exileHe expects the smileOf our amityTo lighten his heartAnd of our supportConscious and activeWhich only can putAn end to his plight…

Every minute countsIt is alreadyA quarter to midnight… 

*

This poem my friendsInvites you to joinThis plea to demandTo the powerfulWho hold in their clawsJulian’s fragile lifeTo release this manAnd through his freedomTo defend our own…

This we do not owe itSolely to himBut also to theseToo precious valuesWhich we believe inAnd which give meaningAnd beauty to our lives…

It is now well pastA quarter to midnight…

(April 2022)