Assange’s Game

Published in El Mundo
(Spain) on 20 June 2012
by Álvaro Vargas Llosa (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Camden Luxford. Edited by Lydia Dallett.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who slipped into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual abuse, is very clever. That, or the British police are going a little soft in the head, since Quito has been offering him political asylum publicly for some time now.

There is, of course, a third possibility: that the British authorities, to be rid of him, were careless with the vigilance of the Norfolk mansion where Assange was staying, easing his escape to the embassy. But this is improbable, because if Ecuador should offer political asylum to Assange it would be up to the House of Lords to decide if he should be given safe conduct out of the country, which is a complicated and lengthy process.

It is an astute move on Assange’s part. With all his local options exhausted, there was only one left: the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. But his position there is weak. His central argument – that if he is extradited to Sweden he will wind up in the hands of the United States to face charges of espionage for releasing documents about the Afghan war on Wikileaks – has much less weight in Strasbourg than in Quito. It is a political argument, and although Strasbourg takes politics into account, the process against Assange is based on an accusation of common crimes to which he has not responded. This is something the Human Rights Court cannot fail to take very seriously. For Quito, on the other hand, Assange is the perfect occasion to turn up the volume and visibility of the confrontation between “21st Century Socialism” and Washington.

Assange’s only hope of getting out relatively gracefully is to politicize his case. The United States has made this much easier for him, it must be said, with its overreaction to the release of 92,000 secret documents related to the war in Afghanistan (an overreaction similar to the one provoked by Daniel Ellsberg with the famous Pentagon Papers in the 1970s: The New York Times and The Washington Post played the part of Assange in that case). Hence, in the asylum request to Correa, Assange says that Washington wants to detain and kill him. Knowing his only escape consists in converting common crimes into political ones, the founder of Wikileaks has continued to release material accusatory of the United States. The most recent bombshell was the video “Collateral Murder” that records the incursion of U.S. troops in a Baghdad suburb at the cost of civilian victims.

Assange knows that, like in Cold War times, inserting himself in the ideological struggle against Washington is a way of obtaining moral exemption. If Assange is “rescued” by Ecuador, a tenacious adversary of the United States, who could possibly concern themselves with the small matter of three charges of sexual abuse and one of rape? [These are] unbearably bourgeoisie considerations that pale in importance before a moral crusade against the enemy of humanity.

None of this implies that the release of a good portion of the 1.2 million documents spread by Wikileaks since 2006, when it was born, has not served a good purpose. All states abuse power, lie, and act as though they are above the law. Some more than others, because they are less subject to democracy and the state of law, but all do it. And so, although it has committed excesses and possibly crimes, Wikileaks has obliged governments, corporations and churches to explain themselves and be a tiny bit more transparent.

The problem is that in the matter of an extradition to Sweden it is not the free expression of Assange or the defense of the individual against power that is in play; rather it is the rights of those women who report being objects of sexual abuse and who request justice in the courts. It is obvious that several governments would be delighted to see Assange jailed as a rapist. It is evident they would put a bullet in the nape of his neck if they could. But at this stage the best protection against that is that Assange is more famous than the governments that hate him, and his case has been aired more widely than that of any other civil adversary of the U.S.

Assange has weakened his moral stature by snuggling up to a government that is just now in the spotlight in terms of freedom of expression. When he says he wants to continue his mission “in a place of peace dedicated to truth and justice," he is giving the Ecuadorian government exactly what it wants to hear, but also saying something absurd. With the exception of Cuba and Venezuela, there is no country in Latin America where the press is subject to greater harassment than in Ecuador. Ecuador will, this week, discuss the possible prohibition of administration officials from giving interviews to two important television channels and the principal print media outlets.

But we shouldn’t be surprised: a drowning man will clutch at straws.


Julian Assange, el fundador de Wikileaks que se ha colado en la Embajada ecuatoriana en Londres para eludir la extradición a Suecia y evitar responder a las acusaciones de abuso sexual, es muy listo. O la Policía británica tiene la sesera algo disminuida, pues hacía rato que Quito le había ofrecido asilo político públicamente.

Cabe, por cierto, una tercera posibilidad: que las autoridades británicas, para deshacerse de él, hayan descuidado la vigilancia en la mansión de Norfolk donde Assange pernoctaba, facilitando su desplazamiento a la sede diplomática. Pero esto es improbable porque en caso de que Ecuador otorgue asilo político a Assange le corresponderá a la Cámara de los Lores dedicir si le da un salvoconducto para salir del país. Trámite complicado y prolongado.

La movida de Assange es astuta. Agotadas las instancias locales, ya sólo le quedaba una: el Tribunal de Derechos Humanos de Estrasburgo. Pero allí su posición es débil. Su argumento central –que si lo extraditan a Suecia acabará en manos de Estados Unidos porque allí lo acusan de espionaje tras haber difundido documentos sobre la guerra de Afganistán en Wikileaks— tiene mucho menos peso en Estrasburgo que en Quito. Es un argumento de naturaleza política y, aunque Estrasburgo tiene en cuenta la política, el proceso contra Assange nace de la acusación de delitos comunes por los que no ha respondido. Esto es algo que el Tribunal de Derechos Humanos no puede dejar de tomar muy en serio. Para Quito, en cambio, Assange es una perfecta ocasión de elevar la acústica y la visibilidad del enfrentamiento entre el Socialismo del Siglo XXI y Washington.

La única esperanza que tiene Assange de salir relativamente airoso es politizar su caso. Estados Unidos le ha facilitado mucho esta posibilidad, hay que decirlo, con su sobrerreacción a la divulgación de los 92.000 documentos secretos sobre la guerra de Afganistán (sobrerreacción parecida a la que provocó Daniel Ellsberg con los famosos Papeles del Pentágono en los años 70: los Assange de entonces fueron el 'New York Times' y el 'Washington Post'). De allí que, en la petición de asilo a Correa, Assange diga que Washington lo quiere "detener y matar". Sabiendo que su única escapatoria consiste en convertir los delitos comunes en delitos políticos, el fundador de Wikileaks ha seguido desde entonces difundiendo material acusatorio contra Estados Unidos. El último bombazo fue el video 'Collateral Murder', que recoge la incursión de tropas estadounidenses en un barrio de Bagdad a costa de víctimas civiles.


Assange sabe que, como en tiempos de la Guerra Fría, insertarse en la lucha ideológica contra Washington es una forma de obtener dispensa moral. Si Assange es 'rescatado' por Ecuador, adversario tenaz de Estados Unidos, ¿a quién puede importarle el pequeño asunto de tres delitos de abuso sexual y una violación? Consideraciones insoportablemente burguesas que palidecen en importancia ante la cruzada moral contra el enemigo de la humanidad.

Nada de lo cual implica que la divulgación de una buena parte de los 1,2 millones de documentos difundidos por Wikileaks desde 2006, cuando nació, no ha servido un buen propósito. Todos los Estados abusan del poder, mienten y actúan como si estuvieran por encima de la ley. Unos lo hacen mucho más que otros, porque están menos sujetos a la democracia y el Estado de Derecho, pero todos lo hacen. Por eso, aunque ha cometido excesos y puede que delitos, Wikileaks ha obligado a los gobiernos, corporaciones e iglesias a dar explicaciones o ser un poquitín más transparentes.

El problema es que en el asunto de la extradición a Suecia está en juego, no la libre expresión de Assange o la defensa del individuo contra el poder, sino el derecho de unas mujeres que denuncian haber sido objeto de abuso sexual a pedir justicia en los tribunales. Que varios gobiernos estarían encantados de que Assange vaya preso por violador, es obvio. Que si pudieran le meterían un tiro en la nuca, es evidente. Pero a estas alturas la mejor protección contra eso es que Assange es más famoso que los gobiernos que lo odian y su caso ha sido más aireado que el de ningún otro adversario civil de Estados Unidos.

Assange ha debilitado su estatura moral arrimándose a un gobierno que está en la picota precisamente en materia de libertad de expresión. Cuando dice que quiere continuar su misión "en un territorio de paz y comprometido con la verdad y la justicia", está dándole al gobierno ecuatoriano en la yema del gusto pero también diciendo algo que sabe absurdo. Con excepción de Cuba y Venezuela, ninguna prensa está bajo mayor acoso en América Latina que la ecuatoriana. Esta semana se discute en Ecuador la prohibición a los funcionarios de la Administración de conceder entrevistas a dos canales de televisión importantes y a los principales medios impresos.

Pero ya se sabe: cuando uno naufraga, se coge del primer madero flotante que encuentra.
This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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