Shooting the Messenger?

Julian Assange does a Chen Guangcheng in London

By Zafar Anjum

Remember the blind Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, who escaped from house arrest on 22 April and sought sanctuary in the US embassy? Later on, the Chinese government gave him a safe passage to the US where he now lives and studies.

That was one month ago.

I was reminded of this incident when I learned about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange skipping bail en route from a court in London on Tuesday (19 June) and taking asylum in the embassy of Ecuador.

He has reportedly applied for asylum in that country. Interestingly, he had recently interviewed the President of Ecuador on his TV show for Russia TV. “Cheer up. Welcome to the club of the persecuted,” the Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa told Assange at the end of the interview.

In the same week that Chen escaped from house arrest in China, Julian Assange lost his court appeal against being extradited to Sweden for questioning about allegations of sexual offences.

Assange’s latest step is quite dramatic. It has caused a stir in diplomatic circles and freedom watchers are keenly following the developments.

Assange’s fear is that once he reaches Sweden, he will be deported to the US where he could face death penalty on charges of espionage. The US government has already issued a statement that they have no role to play in Assange’s case.

Meanwhile, Australia (of which Assange is a citizen) said that the country had made representations to the Swedish government on behalf of Assange. The country’s Foreign Minister Senator Carr said that ‘Australia could not fight his case for him on the sexual assault or anything else in another jurisdiction, nor could it for any other Australian’.

Looming arrest

It has been reported that President Correa has been impressed with Assange’s letter of appeal. AP reported that Julian Assange wants to continue his WikiLeaks work in Ecuador, according to a letter he sent to the country's president.

According to the report, President Rafael Correa said the country would take its time making a decision "because this is a very serious matter". Another report said that a swift decision is expected from his side (maybe within 24 hours).

But legal experts believe that even if Assange gets the asylum, he could be arrested on his way to the airport (to take a plane to Ecuador) for breaching bail.

There are other opinions too. This is what the Sydney Morning Herald (AAP) had to say: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s bold bid for asylum in Ecuador may well pay off, an Australian expert believes.

Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell says the bid could work, said the report. “He’s made a calculated judgment that on the basis of his interactions with the Ecuadorian government that he's fairly confident he will be granted asylum by this particular country,” Professor Rothwell told AAP.

“But ultimately whether Ecuador grants him asylum is a political judgment based on whatever arguments or evidence Mr Assange is able to put to support his case.”

‘Ecuadorian asylum would put him beyond the reach of Sweden and possibly also the US, Prof Rothwell says. Ecuador has an extradition treaty with the US, but it excludes those wanted on political charges.’

It remains to be seen how the drama will now unfold. Will Ecuador provide asylum to Assange? Even if he gets it, will the UK government give him a safe passage to the airport?

Given Assange’s astuteness and resourcefulness, even that is not far-fetched for him. His story might well be one of the greatest escapes of this century.

Though Assange’s critics say that he should not have jumped bail and should have faced the questioning by the Swedish government, his mother says that her son ‘was left with no option but to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London’.

It would be interesting what Chen would have to say to Assange on this matter as ironically, the same land of freedom that Chen has chosen to escape to, is interested in getting hold of Assange and making him pay for the crime of exposing the greatest power on earth.

First published in MIS Asia.com.

The arrested development of Julian Assange

Cyberspace's most famous activist, Julian Assange, has been under house arrest for more than a year now. But he is not keeping quiet.

By Zafar Anjum

Is it retrogressive if a new media pioneer goes back to the traditional mainstream media to air his views?

Whatever you call it, this is exactly what Cyberspace’s most famous activist, Julian Assange, the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, is going to do today.

In January this year, WikiLeaks announced that Assange would launch "a series of in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world", titled The World Tomorrow.

Perhaps Assange had no choice but to try something traditional. One, he is under house arrest in the U.K, which means travelling is out for him. Two, his WikiLeaks has been denied the oxygen of money for about 500 days now. The website is facing a financial blockade imposed by U.S. banks.

It is noteworthy that as long as Assange did not touch the banks, he was tolerated by the system. The leaks of U.S. embassy cables damaged the reputation of many countries and their heads but Assange was still able to do his work. When he was about to leak some secret documents of a bank (reportedly it was Bank of America), all hell broke loose.

Assange might have learnt his lesson. It is fine to touch politicians. But never touch the bankers.

Or, has he? His show will reveal it.

The World Tomorrow

The first episode of Assange’s show is going to air today. He has chosen RT, an English-language international satellite news channel, headquartered in Russia. The programme will also be broadcast on other national channels.

This will be a weekly show and each episode will be 26 minutes long.

Assange, who is under house arrest, faces allegations of rape and sexual assault lodged by two women in Sweden. Britain's Supreme Court is to decide if Assange should be extradited to Sweden. Ironically, no charges have been officially filed against him.

RT has said that the programme, written and hosted by Assange, will focus on his favourite topic: controversy. The show will feature 10 "iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders" – people Assange can clearly identify with, the channel said.

The show has been shot at the very location that Julian Assange has been under house arrest for the last year and a half.

In a recent interview with RT, Assange said that he chose RT because he found the channel’s penetration higher than Al Jazeera’s. “We’ve seen RT’s reportage on the attacks on WikiLeaks for a number of years, and that reportage has generally been quite supportive,” he said. “When we were looking what international broadcaster we wished to partner with as opposed to national broadcasters, we looked to see what was the penetration into the United States. And RT had higher penetration in the United States than Al Jazeera.”

“The BBC is the leading contestant but the BBC has been acting in a hostile manner towards us so we didn’t consider that the BBC would be an appropriate partner,” he said.

“RT is rallying a global audience of open-minded people who question what they see in mainstream media and we are proud to premiere Julian Assange’s new project,” editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement on the television network's website.

In the RT interview, Assange also talked about his experience of working with mainstream media companies like The Guardian and the New York Times. “Any organisation, once it grows to a sufficient size and has sufficient influence, starts having to make political compromises,” he said. “And media organisations, by their very nature, are engaged in the political sphere. So the editors and publishers of media organisations have to sit down at the table with power groups, and they start becoming captured by these power groups.”

“So, we have found that working with them, when we try to get out our material through organisations, say, such as The Guardian, or the New York Times, or the BBC, that these organisations self-censor in a tremendously frequent manner and in a way which is against their stated values. It is not just against our values.”

“It is against their stated values. And in some cases even against the contracts that we have made with those organisations,” he added.

Assange even predicted how mainstream media companies will react to his show. “Let’s imagine a sort of obvious one,” he said. “There’s Julian Assange, enemy combatant, traitor, getting into bed with the Kremlin and interviewing terrible radicals from around the world. But I think it’s a pretty trivial kind of attack on character. If they actually look at how the show is made: we make it, we have complete editorial control, we believe that all media organisations have an angle, all media organisations have an issue.”

This is what CNN had to say about the show: “Commentators outside Russia have questioned the apparent link the show creates between Assange and the Kremlin, given RT's government-funded status.”

Whatever the criticism, the world will pay attention to what Assange has to say about the world tomorrow. Bring it on, Assange. We are all ears.

When conversations get leaked

What lessons can we draw from Radiagate in India and WikiLeaks’ Cablegate?

While I was away in rural India, disconnected from the Internet and television, two major stories broke that I believe would have far-reaching ramifications on an ancient art—the art of conversation.

As technology is driving changes in all aspects of our lives, it will affect the art of conversation too. The way people talk, especially those with power, pelf and influence, will have to change in the age of a protean and ever-agile media. You never know who is eyeing you with a camcorder. In the age of cheap electronic surveillance systems, every bloke is a potential Sherlock.

In India, the Niira Radia tapes (called Radiagate by Indian newsmagazine Outlook) involving India’s major corporate leaders, journalists, politicians (including the controversial D. Raja of the alleged 2G scam) and a lobbyist, Niira Radia, took the Indian media by storm last week. These are recordings of 104 phone calls by Niira Radia, founder of Vaishnavi Communications, to various Indian power brokers.

Among others, the conversations between Radia and key media people in India, recorded at the behest of the Income Tax Department, exposed the rot in the corridors of power which are equally pounded by babus, netas, journalists, and wheelers and dealers of all hues to subvert democratic institutions and processes in a shameless manner.

In this case, the allegations against some senior journalists are that they are too close to lobbyists and that they acted as go-betweens for fixing political deals. At least one of the journalists involved in the affair, Burkha Dutt of NDTV, has protested against the insinuations of her corruptibility. Gullibility and error of judgment, yes, she says in her defence, but nothing more should be read in her conversations with Radia.

Writing in the Outlook, senior Indian journalist S. Nihal Singh commented: “Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the tapes’ content is not merely the chumminess of senior journalists with members of the corporate world but their willingness to be of service to individual politicians by lobbying for them with persons able to swing jobs” (Past Isn’t Perfect. But.).

When senior journalists were caught on tape throwing into thin air their professional distance with a lobbyist (who works for Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani), India’s mainstream media hesitated to cover the story. Some suspected a closing of ranks against a common enemy: the wide-eyed public, sections of which refuse to be dumbed-down despite the media’s constant efforts. ‘A crow doesn’t eat another crow’s meat,’ commented a politician on the media’s collusion to suppress the story.

It was due to people’s pressure through the social media (Twitter and Facebook) that forced the mainstream media to highlight the Niira tapes in their coverage. Soon, a miffed Ratan Tata moved the Supreme Court to restrain the media companies from publishing the tapes’ content as it violated his privacy. Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, warned in his petition that India is on the path to becoming a “banana republic”.

But was it the right move by a much respected corporate leader? A commentator said that by moving the Supreme Court to have these tapes removed would make many people feel that the Tatas have something to hide. He has got a point there, hasn’t he?

As the Radiagate discussion rages on in India’s television studios and people’s drawing rooms, the debate is focused on media ethics and the rising power of the social media. Mainstream media have realised that even though they would want to downplay a story to protect their ilk, social media will not sit tight and will ultimately force their hand.

WikiLeaks’ Cablegate

The other story, the latest release of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables by Wikileaks (dubbed as Cablegate), caused waves around the world’s diplomatic circles. Washington’s diplomats were aghast as their leaders’ unpalatable remarks and agendas were brought into the public domain. There was outrage in Iran and Pakistan and some tattling in Singapore over Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew’s remarks over the “psychopathic” North Koreans.

This is outrageous, screamed the mighty of the world. Is nothing sacrosanct anymore? they asked.

In an editorial, The New York Times said the world works on certain principles and following those principles makes our world safe and well-ordered (and less chaotic). In its view, the WikiLeaks’ co-founder Julian Assange (picture), now wanted by the Interpol, is an anarchist with little respect for those who run the world. In other words, Assange’s revelations challenge the world order and scuttle the power of those who guard it. Naturally, they would want this whistleblower’s back.

Yet nothing dramatic will come out of either Radiagate or Cablegate (Maybe Radia will lose her business and Assange will be arrested or assassinated). But, by and large, this too shall be forgotten. The moral standards of the world’s movers and shakers have sunk so low (what did you expect? you might well ask) that they can lie with impunity and defend themselves with a polished and aggressive cool once their faces are painted with studio make-up.

In the long run, perhaps, the Niira tapes in India and Assange’s leaks will teach one lesson to those who deal with power. Be cautious. Mind what you talk, how you talk and who you talk with. The lesson applies to corporate leaders too.

While I was reading stories about Radiagate and Cablegate in the media, I remembered what Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt once said controversially: Don’t do anything that you shouldn’t be doing. Though he was talking in the context of youngsters and their frank no-holds-barred approach to social media, his avuncular advice might be handy for grown ups too. The tape and the camera can be used to frame and beat the powerless but in the hands of the zealous, it can turn its lens back on the powerful. That, for me, is the main lesson of Radiagate and Cablegate.