Australia Suddenly Cares About Its Journalists When They Get In Trouble In China
"Where has all this mainstream passion for Australian journalists been hiding for the last decade?"
#Assange #FreeAssange
medium.com/@caityjohnston…
"Where has all this mainstream passion for Australian journalists been hiding for the last decade?"
#Assange #FreeAssange
medium.com/@caityjohnston…
The government of China has arrested and imprisoned an Australian journalist for exposing Chinese war crimes, and a UN expert has attested that there is evidence he's been tortured.
Oh sorry, did I say China? My mistake, I meant the US and UK. I get them mixed up sometimes.
Oh sorry, did I say China? My mistake, I meant the US and UK. I get them mixed up sometimes.
No, what China did was attempt to question two reporters, the ABC's @billbirtles and Michael Smith from the AFR, in relation to another Australian journalist @ChengLeiCGTN who is being held by Chinese authorities and facing a six-month detention on unknown charges.
Two Australian journalists appeared to be at risk of suffering the same fate as Lei, and their government immediately took action to protect their citizens, as governments are supposed to do. 
There was no abandonment and proclamation of guilt against those journalists like the one Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard made against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2010, prior to any conviction, trial or due process of any kind.
smh.com.au/technology/wik…
smh.com.au/technology/wik…
There was no gibberish about how Birtles, Smith and Lei need to “face the music” in China so that the Chinese legal process can “run its course”, like the nonsense spouted about Assange last year by Australia’s current LNP Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
canberratimes.com.au/story/6443355/…
canberratimes.com.au/story/6443355/…
Canberra saw Australian journalists facing a potential injustice, and they wasted no time leaping to action.
Where has all this mainstream passion for Australian journalists been hiding for the last decade?
A statement from @MarisePayne on the occurrence reinforced a previous government advisory that Australian citizens who travel to China face the risk of “arbitrary detention”. It is funny to see that phrase in relation to Australian journalists today.
theguardian.com/media/2016/feb…
theguardian.com/media/2016/feb…
Where was the concern over arbitrary detention then? Assange is an Australian citizen and is a journalist by any conventional definition of the term — an award-winning journalist at that. Why has his home country abandoned him so outrageously?
The answer to these questions, as with so much else, boils down to power and imperialism. For all the huffy, self-righteous indignation, this is about nothing more noble than imperialism and oligarchic control.
As a leaked 2017 State Department memo by neocon Brian Hook patiently explained to Rex Tillerson, human rights are only ever a concern for the US empire when they can be leveraged against nations like China which are not a part of the power alliance.
politico.com/story/2017/12/…
politico.com/story/2017/12/…
And now Assange is subject to a ridiculous Kafkaesque show trial at the hands of this empire, where he is seeing his attorneys for the first time in six months and watchdog groups are being banned from witnessing the proceedings.
Where is the passion for protecting Australian journalists here?
