By Aniruddh Naik:
Julian Assange, the Australian born ‘Internet Freedom Fighter’ as he is called by many, is the Wikileaks founder and he needs no further introduction. A hacker in his early years, he has revived the world of journalism or the so-called ‘espionage’ reporting by startling debunks.
What’s the actual case against him?
The real question to be asked: Does Sweden really need to carry on criminal proceedings against him? Well, their reason is that he has ‘sexually’ assaulted two women. The Daily Mail carried an intriguing report on these allegations. It said that the two victims have agreed to the fact that their liaisons with Julian was with their ‘consent’. So when these women had coitus, separately though, with consent, then why has this case been slapped on Assange? This is because the female interviewing officer, presumably because of allegations of a sabotaged condom in one case and a refusal to wear one in the second, concluded that both women were victims: that one had been raped, and the other was subject to sexual molestation.
Why Assange is so reluctant to go to Sweden?
The fact of the matter is that if Julian is extradited to Sweden, from there he will be further extradited to United States of America. USA has a great benefit in imprisoning Julian and trapping him under their vicious federal enquiry. It badly wants to indict him on the following faulty premises: In the year 2010, Julian Assange’s Wikileaks leaked 250,000 US diplomatic cables, out of which 53% were ‘classified’, 40% were ‘confidential’ and over 6% were ‘secret’. These cables were bound to expose lot of valuable information which is otherwise opaque and never comes out in the public domain. There is more to it. It is said that Julian Assange’s account in Swiss bank PostFinance was frozen. MasterCard, Visa and Bank of America stopped giving monetary support to Wikileaks.
What then?
After his plea was rejected by High Court in London, it was quite imminent that he must be extradited. So Julian Assage took asylum in Embassy of Ecuador. Not to be surprised that this is the second asylum taken by him in Ecuador.
In late November 2010, Kintto Lucas, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Ecuador, spoke about giving Assange residency with “no conditions… so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums”. Lucas believed that Ecuador may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. A few hours later, President Rafael Correa stated that WikiLeaks “committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information” and he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables.
What now?
Now he is back again to Ecuador Embassy seeking asylum. This time, Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino has supported his asylum and dared the UK government to come and get him away from them. It is also said that Ecuador is in talks with London government to take give him free passage to Ecuador and thus he cannot be legally prosecuted; but Londoners want him to extradite to Sweden and from there to US.
Finally coming out of the Ecuadorian closet the other day he audaciously asked US to stop ‘witch-hunting’ him and his organization. Assange also thanked Ecuador for coming out in his support. Now all eyes are on the Assange’s next move to avoid his deportation to Sweden and then to US. It is said that he will be soon seeking justice in the International Court of Human Rights in coming days.