Letter to British Ambassador re Julian Assange

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday May 02, 2019 23:59 by Justin Morahan

Truth tellers jailed, liars go free

Summary: The UK is shamed by the jailing of Julian Assange

Dear Ambassador

Further to my telephone call to your Embassy earlier today I wish to state my support for the protest by my friends outside the Embassy in solidarity with Julian Assange.

Because of a hospital appointment I was unable to join them.

Now I add my own voice to theirs. It is shameful and reprehensible, unworthy and indefensible, that the British State has jailed this whistleblower for telling the truth.

It is even more despicable that you are willing to extradite him to a country whose lies and murders during the Iraq war he has exposed.

Your country under Mr Tony Blair incited a coalition of deluded governments to wage that war under false pretences. Your Prime Minister lied to the world stating that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The unspeakable horror of "Shock and Awe" ensued; a beautiful country was devastated, a puppet government installed and another monster named ISIS was born. The US and UK created the Iraq war. The Iraq war created ISIS.

At that time there was no Julian Assange to uncover the lies that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the maiming in body and mind of possibly twice that number, and the untold millions of their relatives who have suffered collateral damage as a result of that same war in Iraq.

The United Kingdom should be ashamed because of the major role it played in that ruthless devastation of a people. Ireland too should be ashamed because of its spineless support for it, - by facilitating the passage of armed US troops through our civilian Shannon airport.

It might be expected that the liar states who promoted and supported that war would try to make some compensation to the victims when the truth of their perfidy was made known to them,

Instead, they compound their wrongdoing by jailing the truth tellers.

It is a spectacle of two powerful bullies leading collaborators and onlookers in strangling the truth. It is so overwhelmingly disgusting that it should be immortalised in art.

I totally reject the comment of sentencing Judge Deborah Taylor that Julian Assange exploited what she called his "privileged position" to flout the law and advertise internationally his disdain for the law of the UK. Such a vacuous comment could come only from someone enjoying the overweening position of a sentencing judge looking down in disdain from the privileged Bench. The suggestion that seven years of confinement in an embassy is a privilege takes some beating for arrogance and disdain.

Shame on the UK, shame on the USA, shame on the coalition of the willing and shame on Ireland.

Cheating and lying politicians come ten a penny. They are remembered with infamy. Principled whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Mordechai Vanunu and Aaron Schwartz will always be scarce as gold.

But

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan

Human rights activist, pacifist