Why the US is Persecuting Assange

Cockburn, Patrick
http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/04/why-the-us-is-persecuting-assange/
Date Written:  2019-06-04
Publisher:  Counterpunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23718

Governments don't like it when reporters disclose secrets that impede their preferred narrative. This article draws parallels between Assange and the work of Yemeni reporter Maad al-Zikry.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The international media may not have always covered itself in glory in the war in Yemen, but there are brave journalists and news organisations who have done just that. One of them is Yemeni reporter Maad al-Zikry who, along with Maggie Michael and Nariman El-Mofty, is part of an Associated Press (AP) team that won the international reporting Pulitzer prizethis year for superb on-the-ground coverage of the war in Yemen. Their stories included revelations about the US drone strikes in Yemen and about the prisons maintained there by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The US government clearly did not like this type of critical journalism. When the Pulitzer was awarded last Tuesday in New York, Zikry was not there because he had been denied a visa to enter the US. There is no longer a US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but two months ago he made his way to the US embassy in Cairo where his visa application, though fully supported by AP and many other prestigious institutions, was rejected....

Can what Assange and WikiLeaks did in 2010 be compared with what Zikry and AP did in 2019? Some commentators, to their shame, claim that the pursuit of Assange, and his current imprisonment pending possible extradition to the US or Sweden, has nothing to with freedom of expression.

In fact, he was doing what every journalist ought to do and doing it very successfully.
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