There is a case to be made that in 2010, WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, redefined the boundaries of journalism by leveraging modern technologies to bring hundreds of thousands of secret documents to light.
In 2012, Assange and WikiLeaks are attempting to redefine something else, by changing the definition of "political dissident" in our vocabulary to include people persecuted by western governments.
Although WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 and its first releases had to do with corruption in Kenya, failing Icelandic banks and Scientology, the whistleblower site gained international prominence in 2010 when an April release entitled Collateral Murder showed a video clip from a U.S. helicopter in Iraq firing on and killing two unarmed Reuters journalists.
The furor from that release had barely subsided when, in July 2010, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan, painting a devastating picture of the war effort and, as U.S. Senator John Kerry put it, raising "serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan."
In the final days of November 2010, the release of 251,000 confidential U.S. Embassy cables shook the global diplomatic establishment by airing dirty laundry from countries as diverse as Tunisia (massive corruption of then-president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali), Nigeria (Shell Oil placing its people in key Nigerian ministries) and the United Kingdom (training a Bangladeshi death squad).
Although praised by many as groundbreaking journalism, the release also seemed to unite the global diplomatic community against WikiLeaks, with some American critics even calling for Assange's assassination.
By December 2010, Assange was behind bars in the U.K. after turning himself in to British authorities, following a Swedish arrest warrant that states he is suspected of "sexual misconduct." Also behind bars is American soldier Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks.
While Assange has resisted his extradition to Sweden, citing concerns that he has yet to be charged with a crime and outlining fears that he may be subsequently extradited to the U.S., where he is rumoured to be facing a sealed indictment, Manning has been locked up by U.S. authorities. Their treatment of him was bad enough to earn a rebuke from a United Nations special rapporteur on torture, who described Manning's detention conditions as "cruel, inhuman and degrading."
With that in mind, Assange has asked for political asylum in Ecuador, a request that was granted last Thursday after he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19.
"Why doesn't Assange trust Sweden? It already helped the CIA render suspects to torture," said Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, pointing to a 2006 UN ruling that Sweden violated the global torture ban when it transferred two Egyptian asylum seekers back to Egypt at the CIA's behest.
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, touched on the same concerns when he explained his decision in a radio interview, pointing out that he feared Assange could face the death penalty if he were prosecuted and convicted in the U.S.
And why doesn't Assange trust the U.K.? The U.K., too, has been acting in a highly irregular manner, with the Foreign Office issuing a thinly veiled threat that it could enter the Ecuadorian embassy to get Assange and ship him to Sweden.
In a column for Britain's Guardian, Mark Weisbrot pointed out that "it is difficult to even find an example of a democratic government even making such a threat, let alone carrying it out."
And here, questions of legitimate justice and illegitimate prosecution seem to come to the fore, just as questions of legitimate secrecy and illegitimate (or illegal) acts were brought to light by WikiLeaks' journalistic releases.
So is Assange a dissident? Is Manning? The answers may vary, but the questions are becoming more legitimate by the day.
