Declaração de Assange na embaixada do Equador em Londres

ACTUALIZAÇÃO: Robert Wenzel disponibilizou hoje, 20-8-2012, uma cronologia que, creio, muito pode contribuir para a compreensão do que está a acontecer com Assange e a Wikileaks.
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Nunca escondi as minhas simpatias pela organização Wikileaks e, por consequência, pelo seu primeiro responsável, Julian Assange. Na esteira de outros importantes whistleblowers como Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), "Deep Throat" (Watergate), Mordechai Vanunu (programa nuclear israelita), Bernard Connolly ou Marta Andreason ([ir]responsabilidade política e financeira na UE), etc., é minha firme convicção a superioridade moral da sua posição até pelos tremendos riscos pessoais que incorrem quando tomam a iniciativa de proceder à denúncia pública.

Há hora que escrevo, em interpol.org, continua o "Aviso Vermelho" contra Assange na homepage da Interpol (Robert Wenzel guardou um snapshot aqui). Ora, não tenho memória de criminosos como um Khadafi (ou um Assad...) terem tido um tratamento semelhante mas tenho bem presente a especial dificuldade de cooperação dos aparelhos judiciais português e britânico relativamente a um certo ex-presidente de um clube de futebol português, novela que há anos se arrasta, que gritantemente contrasta com a celeridade e a histrionice das autoridades que, na pátria da Magna Carta, se verificam no caso Assange.

Os detractores de Assange, que inicialmente o acusaram de "ter destruído para todo o sempre o instrumento diplomático" e de ter "posto em risco a vida de milhares (de espiões americanos)", desvalorizam agora o caso remetendo-o para meros casos de violação de duas cidadãs suecas ainda que, após os actos, estranhamente, as supostas "violadas" tenham continuado a conviver socialmente com Assange. Estranhíssimo que, logo após a queixa ter sido apresentada pelas vítimas(?) e Assange se ter, voluntariamente, apresentado numa esquadra da política sueca, ele ter sido expressamente autorizado a sair da Suécia por não haver razões para o reter no país. Este trabalho - Sex, Lies and Julian Assange - do programa Four Corners da televisão ABC australiana, deveria ser suficiente para afastar, de vez, tão conveniente leitura.

Pelo que  precede, a declaração de Assange fez, há umas horas atrás, numa varanda da embaixada do Equador em Londres, é um acto político revelador de grande coragem na defesa da liberdade.

Transcrição:

"I am here today because I cannot be there, with you today. But, thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve, your generosity of spirit.

On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it and you brought the world’s eyes with you.

Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew that there would be witnesses. And that is because of you.

If the UK did not throw away the Vienna Convention the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

So the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador.

Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.

And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.

And I also thank the government, and in particular the Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, who have upheld the Ecuadorian Constitution and its notion of universal citizenship in their consideration of my asylum.

And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this Constitution.

And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me the hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.

This Friday there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington DC to address this very situation.

And so I am grateful to the people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and to all other Latin American countries who have come out to defend the right to asylum.

And to the people of the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not. And to those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice, your day will come.

To the staff, supporters and sources of Wikileaks, whose courage and commitment and loyalty has seen no equal.

To my family and to my children who have been denied their father. Forgive me. We will be reunited soon.

As Wikileaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this movement to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America.

Will it return to and reaffirm the values, the revolutionary values it was founded on?

Or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world, in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?

I say it must turn back.

I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch hunt against Wikileaks.

The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation. The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff, or our supporters.

The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

There must be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media organisations, be it Wikileaks or be it The New York Times.

The US administration’s war on whistleblowers must end.

Thomas Drake, William Binney, John Kirakou and other heroic US whistleblowers must – they must – be pardoned and compensated for the hardships they have endured as servants of the public record.

And to the Army Private who remains in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was found by the UN to have endured months of torturous detention in Quantico,Virginia and who has yet – after two years in prison – to see a trial, he must be released.

Bradley Manning must be released.

And if Bradley Manning did, as he is accused, he is a hero, and an example to all of us and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.

Bradley Manning must be released.

On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial. The legal maximum is 120 days.

On Thursday, my friend, Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Human Rights Center was sentenced to 3 years for a tweet.

On Friday, a Russian band were sentenced to two years in jail for a political performance.

There is unity in the oppression.

There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.

Thank you."