Chased by the Law: Julian Assange

In lieu of the documentary we recently watched on WikiLeaks, I did a bit of digging. After clicking many links, I found an article written by Australian journalist and documentary film maker John Pilger in 2014, detailing the various wrongdoings and violations of Julian Assange's human rights during Sweden's seven-year preliminary investigation into an allegation of rape. Violations include the years-long placement of Assange in pre-charge detention, and the denial of his right to due process.

Although Swedish investigators have since dropped the case against Assange, authorities recently uncovered the involvement of the UK's Crown Prosecution service in destroying key emails regarding the WikiLeaks founder after the lawyer on the UK end of the investigation retired in 2014. It has also been revealed that the lawyer in question had advised Swedish officials to not visit London to interview Julian Assange in 2010 or 2011, prolonging his standoff with authorities at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Some people believe that the Swedish investigation into the rape allegations had false intentions, later causing people to refer to Assange as a 'political prisoner' who was hunted because of the information WikiLeaks has leaked. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. With the amount of times that the United States has called for charges, calling him a "terrorist', stating he is a threat to world peace and democracy, he's clearly not their favourite person. While there may be some grey areas surrounding WikiLeaks, they have made many important contributions to journalism as a whole, and have given the public information and insight on things they otherwise wouldn't dream of knowing about. If we are aiming for a truly free press, we can not only be in favour of the press when it is not targeting our own country. In events like that, the press is doing precisely what the people are asking of it, typically for the benefit of society.

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