UN torture expert on Julian Assange's persecution and the lies behind it
January 11, 2021
A UK judge has rejected a US attempt to extradite Julian Assange, citing the Wikileaks founder's risk of suicide and the poor conditions of US prisons. But Judge Vanessa Baraitser accepted the basis for the US government's espionage case against Assange and ruled against releasing him on bail.
Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, discusses the longstanding persecution of Assange and the lies that have been used to justify it to the public. Melzer, who has visited Assange in prison, has played a critical role in exposing the deception surrounding Assange's initial Sweden extradition case.
"Based on 20 years of experiences of visiting prisoners, many of whom are being exposed to to extremely severe conditions including ill treatment, it is a miracle that this man is still alive," Melzer says.
Interviewer: Aaron Mate (Grayzone), Guest: Nils Melzer. UN Special Rapporteur on torture and Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow.
Video by The Grayzone - (Pushback with Aaron Maté)
The US has displaced between 38-60m people across 8 countries since 2001. Keep this in mind the next time you hear US officials pledge to defend “international law,” “human rights,” or “sovereignty and territorial integrity”
It is scandalous that thousands of professors, doctors and experts were effectively silenced during the pandemic, and at the same time we hear and read nonsense about the pandemic every day by a person who became famous by assembling computers in his garage. pic.twitter.com/ekyvYXECG3
John Pilger's 'The War You Don't See' (2011) is a powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?
0 Comments