The West should accommodate Assange

Wikileaks' founder, Julian Assange, may feel relieved that the Organisation of American States (OAS) has stood behind Ecuador in its diplomatic row with the UK government. The row started after Assange took refuge in Ecuadorian embassy. The foreign ministers of the OAS have passed a motion backing the "inviolability of diplomatic missions." However, the UK has denied it threatened to storm the Ecuadorian embassy, though the fact remains that the UK government had issued a demarche to the Ecuadorian Embassy that it might invoke the 1987 Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act to temporarily revoke the extraterritoriality and diplomatic immunity of the embassy to arrest Assange. So, there is still no reason for Assange to be fully assured, especially after accidental revelation on Friday that the British police have plans to nab him as soon as he steps out of the embassy.
Assange took shelter in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in last June after the UK Supreme Court dismissed his plea to reconsider the appeal against extradition to Sweden where he is facing the charge of sexual assault against two women. To all appearances, his real concern is not that he might be extradited to Sweden to face the charge. On the contrary, his real fear is that Sweden may ultimately hand him over to the USA. And if that happens, he may have to face court trial like Bradley Edward Manning. It may be noted that Manning, a US Army's Private First Class, was arrested in May 2010 from Iraq on suspicion of passing classified information to Wikileaks. Wikileaks, it may be recalled, had released to the press more than 250,000 secret US State Department diplomatic cables through its website.
Needless to say, the leaked information was embarrassing for the US and other governments affected by it. But it is at the same time strange that the Western governments that stand for free flow of information as a matter of principle have declared nothing short of a war against an individual for spilling some classified material of a government! Is the world going backward rather than forward in the 21st Century? Remember Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 did the same thing -- call it an 'offence', if you like, at least according to present standards -- or even worse, by divulging top secret Pentagon papers on Vietnam war to the press, to the New York Times in particular? Paradoxically though, he did not draw any establishment wrath for his act. On the contrary, he received a lot of public accolades. What is more, he was even awarded the Right Livelihood Award as recently as 2006.
Why then is this exception in Assange's case? Why has he become such an international pariah? Is it that, unlike the Ellsberg's case in 1971, his information neither serves the interests of the incumbent Democrat government in America, nor of the opposition Republicans? But Ellsberg's Pentagon papers were of great help for the Democrats of that time as those were the precursor of the Watergate scandal that finally brought down Nixon presidency.
Assange, for himself, seems to have no moral crisis for what he has done, since as a journalist he has always been a supporter of press freedom. He made many international public appearances in which he strongly spoke against any kind of press censorship and advocated investigative journalism. He even received awards for his service for his cause that include 2009 Amnesty International Media award, 2010 Person of the Year of Time magazine (Readers' Choice), gold medal from Sydney Peace Foundation in 2011 and so on.
So he was the darling of the establishment when he was just talking about press freedom, but turned out to be its bitter foe when he attempted to implement what he believed in practice! What he recently told the audience from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London with reference to the punishment awarded to the members of the music band, Pussy Riot, in Russia is pertinent: "There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response."
Given the courage he has shown so far in what he has done to put his conviction into practice, he might not be just grandstanding when he uttered those words.
It seems, so far, the secret establishment materials spilled through Assange's Wikileaks have achieved nothing of substance other than causing embarrassment for the US and other governments. But can we forget that the Wikileaks' release of secret diplomatic cables dealing with Tunisia described the then-president Ben Ali and his family as mafia turning the country into a police state? In an eerie coincidence, the Arab Spring began exactly at that time first overthrowing Ben Ali out of power and the movement in other countries followed.
The storm blowing all over the world cannot be limited to the developing and the least developed world alone. The cradle of liberal democracy, the West, cannot forever live in a world of make-believe. It is time they (the West) also listened and changed to accommodate people like Assange, who speak for more transparency about secrets so closely guarded by establishments as sacrosanct.

The writer is Editor Science & Life, The Daily Star.