[governance] The Hindu Edit: Shooting the messenger

[Riaz K Tayob]

[For all those who used the free speech argument in favour of de facto 
US control of the "root" not for political obsequiousness...]


      Editorial <http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/>

Published: December 9, 2010 23:30 IST | Updated: December 9, 2010 23:30 
IST December 9, 2010


  Shooting the messenger

The high-profile arrest of besieged WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange 
could, in normal times, have been explained away as a bona fide step 
taken in furtherance of the due process of law. But these are 
extraordinary times, and the talented Editor-in-Chief of the 
whistle-blower website is the target of right wing and lunatic fringe 
politicians in America, some of whom want him assassinated. The charges 
against Mr. Assange will convince only the credulous. The accusations, 
by two women, of unlawful coercion, molestation, and rape in Sweden are 
highly suspect because of their timing and the way they have been 
pursued. All accounts of the sexual encounters suggest they were 
consensual and perhaps even planned. The charges were dropped after 
initial enquiry, but mysteriously revived. Across the Atlantic, of 
course, the campaign against WikiLeaks has been constructed around not 
concerns over women's rights but the website's sensational disclosures 
of highly embarrassing diplomatic cables. Repressive measures against 
WikiLeaks --- such as booting it from Amazon's cloud computing servers, 
cutting off Paypal, Visa and Mastercard payment gateways, denying it an 
Internet domain name, and freezing an account held by the website in a 
Swiss bank --- have been achieved through private, extra-judicial 
manoeuvres. This is what makes the arrest appear vindictive.

The vicious campaign to silence WikiLeaks through distributed denial of 
service attacks and threats of prosecution for espionage in the United 
States have produced the opposite effect, by provoking supporters of the 
website to mount a counter-offensive against the companies involved. The 
net outcome is a cyberwar where militant responses to continued 
repression are guaranteed. Western governments, especially those 
involved in calamitous wars abroad, could then succumb to temptation and 
institute authoritarian controls on Internet access. Now that the 
WikiLeaks Founder is in detention, Washington should not be allowed to 
come up with tendentious arguments to get him extradited to be 
prosecuted for espionage. As Noam Chomsky and several other prominent 
American citizens have pointed out to Australian Prime Minister Julia 
Gillard, the rhetoric in the U.S. is increasingly violent and there are 
grave concerns about Mr. Assange's safety. At a broader level, the 
WikiLeaks challenge presents a clear choice to leaders and governments 
of western countries: to crack down on free speech in the name of 
official secrecy and national security or to make government more 
transparent and accountable. After all, tolerating what pleases you, or 
at least does not displease you strongly, is no big deal. How 
/l'affaire/ Assange gets resolved will be the acid test for free speech 
in countries that claim to be liberal democracies.

Keywords: WikiLeaks founder 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, Julian 
Assange 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, arrest 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, espionage 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, U.S. 
secret cables 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, cablegate 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, whistle-blower 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>, sexual 
scam 
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article941936.ece?css=print#>
The Hindu

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