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Assange as journalist: An inconvenient truth?

By Kellie Tranter - posted Tuesday, 26 June 2012


But on the other hand the very fact of his request has consequences. In the first place the issue has now been taken out of control of the usual hands. In the second place, if the Ecuadorian Government conducts an objective examination of the basis for Assange’s application for political asylum and makes public its conclusions then our government should expect to have to face the excruciatingly embarrassing fact that it has done nothing.

President Correa has a reputation for picking his battles. In 2008 Assistant Professor Jennifer Collins of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point wrote in her paper ‘Rafael Correa and the Struggle for a New Ecuador’ that:

“Correa has not disappointed his supporters in his willingness to stand up to powerful international and domestic interests and to use his political capital to attempt to carry out fundamental changes to Ecuador’s political and economic system. After years of struggle, the Ecuadorian left is finally in a position to set the political agenda and the moment is pregnant with the possibility of change: to bury the failed neo-liberal experiment, to create a state that can defend its sovereignty, and to lay the foundation for a development model that incorporates the poor and protects the environment.”

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If, in his own words, President Correa wants a “brave, sovereign and dignified homeland, equitable, just and without misery”, then it’s unlikely that diplomatic subtlety or political inconvenience will constrain him in commenting on the international stage on the Assange case or the Australian government’s response to or participation in it. 

Can't the government see that it's Groundhog Day? There is a difficult election coming up and what we’re seeing is a repeat of the David Hicks case. We have a government that seems to think it can blindly ignore or fudge its way out of a situation like this, as former Prime Minister John Howard initially did with Hicks, until too late they realised the Australian people are very interested in Assange’s case, skeptical of the government "clean hands" line, concerned about the big boys’ bullying tactics and supportive of a man who had the courage to expose the truth.

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About the Author

Kellie Tranter is a lawyer and human rights activist. You can follow her on Twitter @KellieTranter

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