'Why don't you release Assange?': Mexican president strikes back at US
3 Min Read
Mexican president highlights the US' double standards regarding the prosecution of Julian Assange.
-
A demonstrator holds a "Free Julian Assange" banner outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Friday, Aug. 14, 2020. (AP)
Mexico's president slammed the ongoing political persecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, demonstrating that the US State Department's accusations of human rights violations in Mexico "should not be taken seriously," highlighting the US' hypocrisy.
The report by the US state department criticized the Lopez Obrador administration’s treatment of journalists and claimed that in Mexico, “impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption.”
During his daily news conference, Lopez Obrador described the allegations as politically motivated, and pointed out the US' obvious double standards in the report, stressing why it “should not be taken seriously.”
“Let's see, human rights? Why don't you release Assange?” he asked, referring to the jailed WikiLeaks publisher who faces potential extradition to the US on espionage charges after revealing war crimes committed by American forces abroad. “If you are talking about journalism and freedom, why are you holding Assange?”
“If you talk about acts of violence, how is it that an award-winning United States journalist tells us that the United States government sabotaged the Russian-European gas pipeline?” the president continued.
Read next: Corbyn urges US lawmakers to oppose Espionage Act, support Assange
Earlier in January, US President Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for calling for the release of detained journalists around the world while the US president continues to seek the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.
The Belmarsh Tribunal, an ad hoc gathering of legal experts and supporters named after the London prison where Assange is being held, convened in Washington DC to press the Biden administration to drop the charges.
The hearing was held in the same room where Assange exposed the "collateral murder" video of US aircrew shooting down Iraqi civilians in 2010, the first of hundreds of thousands of leaked secret military documents and diplomatic cables published in major newspapers worldwide.
The revelations about America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including alleged war crimes, as well as US diplomats' candid assessments of their host governments, caused severe embarrassment in Washington.
The charges against Assange were described as an "ongoing attack on press freedom" by the tribunal because the Wikileaks founder was not a spy but a journalist and publisher protected by free speech laws.
“Why is a cartel, or several cartels, allowed to operate in the United States, freely distributing the fentanyl that does so much harm to young people in that country?”
“With all due respect, that is their nature,” Lopez Obrador said of the US foreign policy elite, adding “they do not want to abandon the Monroe doctrine and… the so-called Manifest Destiny.”
The US officials behind the report, the president pointed out, “believe themselves to be the government of the world, and they only see the speck in the other's eye and not the error in their own.”
Mexico’s administration wasn’t the only Latin American government to slam the authors of the State Department report. Bolivia’s foreign ministry condemned US allegations of human rights violations in the Andean nation as “interference in internal affairs,” criticizing the ‘unilateral’ report for failing to maintain objectivity.
