I WAS an intellectual product of the great 1970s in Guyana. This was a period that would have seen outrage by important sections of society over what happened to Julian Assange. At UG, we would have had several symposia on what happened to him and why. There would have been an overzealous debate on how democratic are Western countries over how Assange was brutalized.
Since Assange was denied bail and his incarceration in a high security prison in the UK, there hasn’t been one, not one editorial and not one letter in the press in Guyana in support of Julian Assange, even though most of the major media houses in the world rejected the charges against him by President Donald Trump.

The only exception has been this columnist and I am proud that when my newspaper career is over and I look back at it, I would have written positively about Assange and condemned his brutalization by countries we, in colonial British Guiana, were indoctrinated to believe the standard-bearer for democracy, professional, and unbiased journalism, and judicial independence free from political interference were Western countries.
The genocide is Gaza and the imprisonment of Assange has permanently destroyed that myth that colonised souls throughout the world had been indoctrinated in.

Julian Assange is finally free. I hope we see a world tour by him to explain to post-colonial countries the myth of Western journalism, rule of law and democratic governance. He spent five years in the tightest maximum security prison after being repeatedly denied bail by UK judges.
During those five years, his plight was never mentioned by any Western government, except Australia and Australia only exerted pressure on the US after the Labour Government came into power in 2022. In the years that Assange has been in prison, the world has been shown pictures and names of political activists and journalists that Western countries have informed us are wrongly imprisoned in places like Iran, China, Russia, Belorussia among others. But there was never any mention of the name, Julian Assange.
In fact, many of those persons who are incarcerated in the four countries cited above have had strong words of solidarity from Presidents and Prime Ministers of Western countries but there was never any mention of Assange. The persecution and incarceration of Julian Assange is one of the most disgraceful moments of global hypocrisy and international double standards in the 21st century.
Assange released information given to him by an American intelligence analyst working for the American Army in Iraq. Her name is Chelsea Manning. Assange released the files, which were published by the Guardian in the UK, the New York Times in the USA and Le Monde in France. Manning was charged and pardoned by President Obama.

Assange never lived in the US, never worked for any state agency in the US and never stole security documents from the US government. Assange simply released what Manning gave him. For this reason, the espionage charges against Assange was mysterious. It was for this reason, most of the American mainstream media and the Australian government felt his prosecution was vindictive.
The Assange scandal is over. Assange has been one of the most hounded media operatives in the history of post-World War II by the West. Not one Western government intervened with President Biden to have him released. Why was he finally freed? It has to do with the Australian Prime Minister and no one else.

We should not believe for a fleeting moment, that the US dropped the case against Assange. If the Australian Prime Minister had not intervened, the UK judiciary would have ruled that he must be extradited to the US, and the US would have tried him. It was the non-nonsense insistence by the Australian Prime Minister to the US Government that Assange should be freed.

I think what may have infuriated the Australian Government was the reaction by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken when the Australian PM raised the issue of release. Blinken refused and publicly said that Assange committed espionage and should face a trial. One could only speculate on what the Australian PM must have said. It probably went like this – we are close allies and allies should respect the feelings and requests of each other; an Australian was wrongly charged.
There is one dimension of the Assange persecution and prosecution that has significance for CARICOM countries. It is the retention of the Privy Council in London as the final court for many CARICOM nations. The argument since colonial times, right up to the present date, is that English judges are fair and unbiased and would not accept pressure from political quarters. Those leaders in CARICOM that still believe so need a lecture on the trials of Julian Assange.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.