The UK is railing in opposition to China’s persecution of journalist Zhang Zhan. However again at dwelling, Julian Assange is beneath lock and key at Belmarsh jail for talking the reality.
The British embassy in Beijing printed a scathing assertion in opposition to China for sentencing a citizen journalist to 4 years in jail on Monday, elevating considerations about “media freedom” within the nation.
What it failed to say, nevertheless, is that again at dwelling the British authorities is at present persecuting its personal journalist – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“The case of Zhang Zhan – who was arrested for her reporting on Covid-19 in Wuhan earlier this yr and right now sentenced to 4 years – raises severe considerations about media freedom in China,” declared the embassy, including that Zhang is “one in all a minimum of 47 journalists at present in detention in China.”
“We urge China to launch all these detained for his or her reporting,” the embassy concluded, tagging its assertion with the Twitter hashtag “#DefendMediaFreedom” for one last degree of irony.
Ms Zhang is one in all a minimum of 47 journalists at present in detention in China. The whereabouts of different citizen journalists – together with Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin – is unknown. We urge China to launch all these detained for his or her reporting. #DefendMediaFreedom
— UK in China ?? (@ukinchina) December 28, 2020
The assertion was shared by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Deborah Haynes, the overseas affairs editor for Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Information, however in the end demonstrated the hypocritical and supremacist worldview that nations like the UK and the USA have at all times held: that persecution and the violation of human rights is just okay if we’re those doing it.
Assange, who sparked numerous high-profile authorities scandals together with his exposés since WikiLeaks’ conception in 2006, is at present sitting in a cell within the UK’s infamous Belmarsh Jail – dwelling to a number of the worst scum and villainy in British historical past – awaiting extradition to the USA, a rustic he has by no means even lived in.
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With jail mates like neo-Nazi terrorist David Copeland, Lee Rigby murderers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, and a plethora of pedophiles and serial rapists, one would naturally assume that Assange’s crimes should have been past the pale. However his perceived transgressions have been the identical as nearly each journalist who has ever been persecuted by a authorities in the midst of their responsibility – holding energy to account.
To place it merely, Assange made each the UK and the US appear like a pair of tits – the identical factor that Zhang arguably did to China together with her citizen journalism from Wuhan in the course of the nation’s wrestle with Covid-19.
After exposing the criminality of each the UK and the US governments time and time once more – one notable instance being the 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing on two Reuters journalists in Iraq – they determined that one thing needed to be completed, and the outcome was Assange’s present, unlucky state of affairs – locking the messenger away and throwing away the important thing in order that nobody would be capable of hearken to him once more.
Zhang has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for her transgressions. Assange has been shut away for over eight, and he hasn’t even been extradited but.
For the crime of holding energy accountable, Assange spent practically seven years beneath home arrest within the Ecuadorian embassy in London to keep away from extradition – the place he was beneath secret surveillance – till authorities stormed the embassy in 2019 and whisked him off to Belmarsh.
His well being has suffered, with the WikiLeaks founder alleging “inhumane” therapy in jail, and he has been separated from his fiancé and youngsters.
And even then, his brutal therapy was and stays a little bit of a compromise. In any case, it was alleged that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had proposed droning Assange within the Ecuadorian embassy, and that the US authorities needed to “kill Julian Assange and make it appear like an accident.”
To Silence Wikileaks, #HillaryClinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange — report https://t.co/S7tPrl2QCZ
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October three, 2016
Negotiations needed to happen to even be certain that the US authorities wouldn’t sentence Assange to demise upon his arrival on US soil, although he might very properly nonetheless find yourself dying if his well being continues to spiral in captivity.
The circumstances of Julian Assange and Zhang Zhan are each comparable, and but wildly totally different. The obvious distinction is that solely a tag-team of bullies just like the UK or the US would have the gall to sentence one other nation for doing one thing they see no downside with doing themselves, as long as it maintains their maintain on world domination.
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