Secrets will spill if Assange walks out

If we had not been witness to the events leading to Julian Assange’s landing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London through newspapers and television channels, we would have easily believed it be a fictional plot of a classic thriller. A man takes on the world governments and then the world gets together to take on him. He would have emerged victorious through his heroics if this was indeed fiction. Alas! This is the stuff of the real world.

He exposed the wrongdoing of the US in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and has been paying for it since 2012, when he sought refuge from Ecuador and was ‘confined’ to the embassy premises.

Ecuadorian foreign minister acknowledges that two years in the embassy, without access to outdoor spaces or exposure to sunlight, had ‘caused certain difficulties’. The ‘certain difficulties’ include a heart defect and a chronic lung condition. On Monday, he fuelled speculation by announcing that he will leave the embassy soon. WikiLeaks spokesman, Kristinn Hrafnsson, later clarified that Assange’s comments had been ‘a declaration of hope rather than a declaration that he would be walking out of the embassy’.

Meanwhile, the British police have been standing guard to the embassy to arrest Assange the moment he steps out. The British government wants Assange’s supporters to believe that the crusader has to be extradited to Sweden where he faces allegations of molesting two women. The fact that Britain, who’s royalty is cutting on its expenditures in the face of economic slowdown, has spent £ 6.4 million to get hold of a man facing allegations of molestation, forget charges or conviction, is laughable.

Quite obviously the aim is to send Assange to Sweden and onwards to the US for telling the world US’ worst-kept secrets. Bradley Manning, former army intelligence analyst, has already been sentenced by a US military judge to 35 years in prison for providing ‘classified’ documents to WikiLeaks. They are closing in on Assange. Governments across the world are silent because they too want their secrets guarded.

This is a heavy price to pay for breaking the social contract. This must make us question which side is gaining from the ‘contract’ in the first place?