How does a democracy like ours slide into dictatorship? 

It starts with government control of the media, suppressing freedom of expression, and imprisoning those who publish and report the truth.

That is what Putin has done in Russia. 

And that is what I believe America, the UK and Sweden have conspired to do to founder and publisher of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who informed the world about the murders and torture of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians and prisoners of war by American soldiers. 

None of them has been charged with these war crimes.

In my view, since 2010, the CIA has been gunning for Assange, mounting a ruthless campaign of character assassination, and pressurising America’s close allies, the UK and Sweden, to allow his extradition to the US on trumped-up espionage charges.

Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where for seven years police stood guard 24/7, to arrest him if he left. 

Evidence reveals our government even plotted to storm in and seize him. 

A change of government in Ecuador led to Assange’s cruel treatment, a smear campaign, and his violent arrest in 2019.

Never charged with or convicted of a serious crime, Assange is incarcerated in high-security Belmarsh prison, among convicted terrorists, isolated, and facing a 175-year sentence in solitary confinement in a brutal US supermax jail.

Making an example of Assange, the US aims to silence whistle-blowers, investigative journalists and publishers from revealing state crimes.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, visited Assange in Belmarsh and researched his case. 

Extremely concerned, he wrote a book, The Trial of Julian Assange, available from Verso Books online and local libraries.

This coming Saturday, (October 8) Human Rights campaigners, journalists and defenders of freedom of expression will form a human chain around parliament to demand Assange’s release.

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