Whistle-Blowing: Against the State, For the People

Over the summer, Julian Assange was freed from captivity. For the cave-dwellers among you, Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, the most important whistleblowing platform of the 21st century. It’s responsible for the publishing of the Iraq and Afghanistan War logs, the most sizable leaks in US military history, which revealed, among other things, details about American and Allied war crimes during those two wars.

While the freedom of Assange, who had been imprisoned in conditions described by a UN special rapporteur as “life-threatening” and “psychological torture.” These are the conditions of Belmarsh prison, Britain’s Guantanamo Bay, where Assange was held in permanent solitary confinement for 21 hours a day in a small, sparse cell, deprived of basic rights, as well as the prohibition of engaging with fellow inmates. Human rights organisations, doctors, and journalists all rang the alarm on the inhumane and torturous conditions that Assange was subjected to. 

Before being freed, it was assumed that Assange was to be extradited to the US to face further, and no doubt harsher, imprisonment. All of this is because Assange revealed the truth to the public. Under the alleged guise of national security, we cannot know any of this information. But to put the abstract and ideological concept of national security above firm and binding international law is to wave away any notion of morality. Besides, does anyone still believe national security was the reason for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

It would be dishonest of me not to mention Assange’s highly public sexual assault and rape allegations, which were abandoned by the Swedish prosecution due to the evidence having weakened with time. The case remains highly debated and surrounded by controversy.

Assange was freed in exchange for pleading guilty to one of the eighteen charges of “conspiracy to obtain and disseminate classified defence information” he was accused of. It is a symbolic defeat, the final death throes of WikiLeaks and whistleblowing, which for many years had been withering away. Government agencies have tightened their grip, lest the leaks of the early 2010s (think Manning and Snowden) be repeated. What was a disaster for spy agencies was a boon to journalism and truth. 

Information revealed by leaks is key to holding our governments accountable for their actions. It represents undeniable evidence of crimes and evils committed in the name of freedom and liberty. The information revealed by these leaks, such as war crimes committed in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the violations of the Geneva Convention and the convention against torture committed in Guantanamo, are damning indictments of our ruling regimes. Snowden exposed the enormous government surveillance operation that had built up post-9/11, with the monitoring of citizens reaching an unparalleled scale. You would be a fool to think this surveillance operation has done anything but expand.

We must keep our governments in check, and being in possession of the facts is critical to this. We in the West should not deceive ourselves in any way about the nature of our governments and militaries: we are not the ‘good guys’ or on the ‘right side’ of history. Assange’s fate was an example, a testament to the willingness of our governments to keep their dirty secrets hidden. It has set a dangerous precedent: telling the harsh truth is now crossing the line. What is effectively the criminalisation of good and necessary journalism is a dangerous step down the slippery staircase of totalitarianism.