This is the time to change tack. We have spent too long defending an innocent man for leaking power’s guilty secrets. We have protested too long against their right to destroy Julian’s body so as to silence his voice. We have pleaded for too long for them to stop torturing a man who dared reveal to us crimes our governments are perpetrating , on our behalf, behind our backs. We have spent too long warning the good people out there who can’t be bothered that first they came for Assange, then they will come for others that reveal their dirty secrets, and that eventually there will be no one to defend them – no one to defend those who, today, can’t be bothered about Julian. We have used too much energy trying to impress journalists who fail so spectacularly to support Julian today that, in so failing, they are jeopardising their own profession, they are neutering themselves, they are allowing themselves to be added to the hit list, that they are consenting to their own emasculation.
ENOUGH!
If we are truly in the business of allowing unalloyed truth to prevail, to have the final word, we must make the transition from defending Julian, from warning against the dire consequences of his extradition for him, for us, for the world, from explaining to the apathetic that their apathy equals their powerlessness, to turning the tables on the criminals that are behind his persecution.
We must turn the current court case into a trial of those who ordered young soldiers to kill civilians, to maim and to murder journalists, to shroud whole communities in tears and in pain.
We must turn Julian’s prosecutors into defendants and allow the grandest of juries out there, a well-informed Demos, to pass fair judgment on them
This is not hard to do: Thanks to Wikileaks, the evidence is at out fingertips, at everyone’s disposal.
Is this not why the guilty are demanding Julian’s extradition? Is this not why the murderers are plotting to entomb Julian in a supermax coffin for 175 years?
Friends, we can do it!
If Dimitrov in his trial, that took place in Nazi Germany itself, could turn the tables against Goring and Goebbels, surely, we can turn the current court case into a trial of the military-industrial-national-security complex. Noting that even the Nazi courts gave Dimitrov greater opportunity to speak in his defence than Julian has inside his glass box, we can nevertheless use what is left of liberal democracy’s instruments to take the fight to his accusers with a Glorious, a Magnificent, a Righteous, a Collective WE ACCUSE YOU!
For this reason, I salute the Belmarsh Tribunal. I salute today’s event. I salute all of you who are part of it either as speakers or as active observers. Above all, I salute Julian – for having sacrificed so much so that we can ACCUSE THOSE WHO TRULY DESERVE TO BE ACCUSED, as is our duty.
