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Story of the month ...

December 2010: Most likely, he won't be a CNN Hero. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, most likely will not be among the CNN Heroes in 2011. He might be, though, if he had focused on publishing classified documents from China. Then he would be the pet of many Americans who currently participate in the public man-hunt and can't be negative enough about him, and he might even be a candidate for a Nobel Peace Price. But publishing embarrassing details about derogatory dialogs of U.S. officials illustrating a frightening disrespect for other human beings and cultures is not what U.S. heroes do. It is amazing to see the self-organized alliance forming in this man-hunt: Sarah Palin, who wants Assange pursued like al-Qaida operative (see YouTube), the Bank of America (which had to be bailed out of an self-created economic hole with public money), Mastercard (which is thriving on the economic failure of many citizens lured by a consumption-based society), Pay-Pal, Australia (which considers to canceling Assange's passport, Amazon, PostFinance (a Swiss bank, which froze the legal defense account of Assange), and the list goes on ... (see the summary 'The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks' at salon.com for more alliance partners).

But what is this man-hunt really about? It becomes clear when you read the article "In the time of WikeLeaks" written by Catalina Botero-Marino, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, which was published in the Daily Express, The National Newspaper of Trinidad and Tobago, on December 23rd. This article recalls a number of international legal principles, and calls upon states and other relevant actors to keep these principles in mind when responding to the developments in the WikiLeaks activities (read the article or see a local copy). Applying the principles summarized by the UN Special Rapporteur to WikiLeaks, Assange is doing heroic work to increase transparency and to ensure that people know what their governments and the governments of other countries think, do and say about them. The man-hunt wants to close this "leak" so that in particular the U.S. government can do, think, and say whatever they want without the people in the U.S. knowing, and be as derogatory about other countries' governments, people and cultures as they want to without them knowing about it.

When asked whether they have considered that Barack Obama might get killed on the job of being the U.S. President, Michelle Obama had a very strong response: "People have died for less." I am sure, Julian Assange would have a similar answer if asked whether he considered that he might get killed for doing what he does. People in China and other parts of the world continuously risk to get imprisoned, economically destroyed, and even killed in their quest to inform the people about the doings of their governments. We now again are shown that this is not different in the part of the world that claims to own the human rights, freedom of expression, and democracy.


If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.