By Haniya Khalid
‘There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.’
A quote by black rights activist and leader of 1960s
African-American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, taken from
his book, ‘’A Testament of Hope: Essential Writings and Speeches’’
To a certain silver-haired,
tall-framed gentleman confined for the past approximately 400 days in an
embassy belonging to a small country in Latin America, the former which is
located in London, next to Harrods, this quote may carry considerable weight in
its appeal. Not only that, but it may also, perhaps, gives one a glimpse
into the reasons and motivations for his own activism, similar to King’s in
that he tackles and exposes the oppression by regimes who use, or rather-as
Julian Paul Assange may likely say-twist their own laws to use as the tools of
their tyranny.
However, there is a marked
difference between Assange and King. While Martin Luther King stood up against
the oppression of a certain people, that being black Americans and called for
the recognition of their status as equal citizens of the USA who were entitled
to enjoy the same privileges and rights as their white counterparts, Julian
Assange, the 42 year old founder of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks.org,
stands as the enigmatic head of an organisation that promises to reveal
corruption, secrecy and abuse of power, all vices which inevitably leads to the
violation of human rights- by governments and organisations worldwide.
The slogan, ‘‘we open governments’’, adopted by the organisation on its inception-and so by Assange himself for Wikileaks exists wherever he happens to be- epitomises the struggle that the site has been engaged in for the past six and a half years it has existed. Founded in 2006, Wikileaks does not merely champion their cause of justice and governmental transparency for a specific race or group, but for everyone on earth.
This view, however, is not
shared by his critics. Often, Assange has been accused of ‘‘aiding the enemy’’,
mostly by right wingers and US government officials (most of the time the two
being merged into one entity) despite the fact that even the most leftist of
governments have suffered under the mass expose. The latter includes leaked
documents outlining the procedures at Guantanamo Bay, Church of Scientology
Handbooks, The Iraq War Logs, Afghan War Diaries, and perhaps most importantly,
and for which he was forced, by potential threat of extradition from Sweden to
the US, to go in exile in the embassy, the US embassy diplomatic cables
detailing the inner workings of the world’s superpowers and revealing war
crimes. The ‘’aiding the enemy’' rhetoric is an allegation often thrown
upon him and his equally mysterious staff and more vocal supporters by the
United States government as well as the mainstream media worldwide.
And a new attack in the
form of the DreamWorks film ‘‘The Fifth Estate’’ directed by Bill Condon has
caused the founder to be surrounded by further negative energy. The film,
starring Sherlock Holmes star Benedict Cumberbatch, who himself was approached
via a ‘ten page email’ by the founder on why the latter thought it wrong in
priniciple for the actor to take part in a film that was based on lies and
bias, derived primarily from ‘divorce books’. The film is partly based on
former, and fired, Wikileaks member Daniel Domscheit–Berg’s book, Inside
Wikileaks: My time with Julian Assange at the world’s most dangerous website
and journalist David Leigh's Inside Julian Assanges War On Secrecy.
Wikileaks also retaliated
by leaking a mature version of the script, alongside an internal memo outlining
the extent of the inaccuracies and fabrications present in the film, such as
intense fabrications and conjuring of fictional events portrayed as fact,
including the statement that ‘The star of ’The Fifth Estate’, Benedict
Cumberbatch, stated that director Bill Condon wanted him to play Julian Assange
as an antisocial megalomaniac.’
Having spent the past year
under political asylum in the embassy, which consists of one floor in the
building, Julian Assange’s activities may not sound like that of the average
Oscar-winning, A-Lister, celebrity lifestyle which is churned out at such
incessant speed by the mainstream media, but since the release of the
classified US military cables, he has reached, in the eyes of a strong and
growing support base, rock status. According to an interview by Yahoo
Australia’s Who magazine earlier in 2013 that quizzed him, among other things,
on his lifestyle in the embassy, everyday at 4 in the afternoon, ‘’a small group including
former refugees and soldiers hold a vigil for Assange outside the embassy and
those who have visited him during his confinement ‘’have included Lady Gaga,
actor John Cusack, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, members of Pussy Riot
and Yoko Ono, who has visited “several times”.
But if human governments
are so corruptible, as Assange may argue has been clearly demonstrated by the
US cable leaks, why then is Assange running for a seat, through a virtual
campaign, the first, apparently, to have ever taken place, in the Australian
Senate?
The man himself answers
this pressing question in a 2013 interview by Nick Miller for The Sydney
Morning Herald. Assange says that ‘‘to build properly sometimes it is necessary
to sweep aside the old, corrupt foundations.’’
The question remains
whether Assange can carry out such a daunting task, if he were indeed to gain a seat.
The lines between the two,
organisation and man, are, in the media of today, blurred. But perhaps Julian
Assange, the target of constant character assassination, in his and his staffs consistent stance of running the site and revealing more information sure to embarrass and unveil the façade that
governments and corporations have been carrying for too long to justify
their actions, remains overall unhindered in the Wikileaks mission by such rhetoric. The evidence speaks for itself. The site continues to
publish new documents, the latest being the third installment of the Spy files
published on 4th September 2013.
One thing is for sure. With his naturally white hair,
(which is not dyed, according to the internal memo, contrary to what is
depicted in ‘The Fifth Estate’), soft Australian twang and hardly perceptible
brows he certainly physically resembles the walking billboard of the
organisation’s key ideology: government transparency at the highest level.
