JONATHAN COOK
No fair hearing for Assange at the Guardian
what point do we cry foul when we witness the abuse of a political
dissident, one who dares to take on mighty vested interests?
When
his own state, the local legal system and the media all turn on him?
When he is forced to seek sanctuary in a foreign embassy for many years,
surrounded by state security forces threatening to arrest him if he
leaves? When the world’s highest arbiter on the matter of his
confinement, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,
supports his case? When the state, legal authorities and the media
ignore the ruling and continue to demand his arrest?
If this were
China or Russia, at some point along this trajectory most of us would
have been forced to concede that this was a clear case of political
persecution; that the best he could hope for was a show trial; and that
the local media were failing in their role as watchdogs on power.
But
this is not China or Russia. This is the UK, the dissident is Julian
Assange and it suddenly seems that the world’s leading experts on
arbitrary detention have no clue what they are talking about.
Today
the UN panel on arbitrary detention ruled that Assange, who has spent
more than three years confined to a tiny room in the Ecuadorean embassy
in London, is being arbitrarily detained and that he should be allowed
to walk free.
