Medical Opinion, Torture and Julian Assange
On November 27 this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, delivered an address to the German Bundestag outlining his approach to understanding the mental health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
These comprised two parts, the initial stage covering his diplomatic
asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy, the second dealing with his formal
detention in the United Kingdom at
the hands of the UK legal and
judicial system. The conclusion was a recapitulation of previous
findings: that Assange has been subjected to a prolonged,
state-sponsored effort in torture, nothing less than a targeting of his
being.
Melzer’s address is an expansive
portrait of incremental inter-state torment that led to Assange’s
confinement “in a highly controlled environment within the Ecuadorean
embassy for more than six years.” There was the eventually justified
fear that he would be sought by the United States in extradition
proceedings. The Swedish authorities threw in their muddled lot between
2010 and 2019, attempting to nab Assange for rape claims despite “not
being able to produce enough evidence for an indictment, and which now,
after almost a decade, has been silently closed for the third time based
on precisely that recognition.”
Then came the British contribution,
consisting of encouragement to the Swedes by the Crown Prosecution
Service that the investigation should not be closed, inspiring them not
to get “cold feet”. (The cold feet eventually came.) The Ecuadorean
contribution completed the four-piece set, with the coming to power of a
pro-Washington Lenín Moreno. Embassy personnel in
London were encouraged to make conditions that less pleasant;
surveillance operations were conducted on Assange’s guests and meetings.
Melzer, along with a medical team,
attended to Assange on May 9, 2019 in Belmarsh, finding a man with “all
the symptoms that are typical of persons having been exposed to
psychological torture for a prolonged period of time.” There was little
doubt, in Melzer’s mind, that symptoms “already measurable physically,
neurologically and cognitively”, had been shown.
These calls went unheeded. Melzer, in early November, accused
the UK authorities of showing “outright contempt for Mr Assange’s
rights and integrity.” Despite warnings issued by the rapporteur, “the
UK has not undertaken any measures of investigation, prevention and
redress required under international law.” Melzer’s prognosis was
bleak. “Unless the UK urgently changes course and alleviates his
inhumane situation, Mr Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and
abuse may soon end up costing his life.”
This point has been restated
by Dr. Stephen Frost, a chief figure of the dedicated outfit calling
itself Doctors for Assange. “We repeat that it is impossible to assess
adequately let alone treat Mr Assange in Belmarsh prison and that he
must as a matter of urgency be moved to a university teaching hospital.
When will the UK government listen to us?”
The medical degrading of Assange has
assumed ever greater importance, suggesting unwavering state
complicity. On November 22, over 65 notable medical doctors sent the UK
Home Secretary a note
based on Melzer’s November 1 findings and Assange’s state at the
October 21 case management hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court.
“It is our opinion that Mr Assange requires urgent expert medical
assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any
medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly
equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary
care).”
In a second open letter
to the UK Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice dated
December 4, the Doctors for Assange collective warned that the UK’s
“refusal to take the required measures to protect Mr Assange’s rights,
health and dignity appears [to] be reckless at best and deliberate at
worst and, in both cases, unlawfully and unnecessarily exposes Mr
Assange to potentially irreversible risks.”
The same grounds were reiterated
in a December 16 letter to Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne,
with a curt reminder that she had “an undeniable legal obligation to
protect your citizen against the abuse of his fundamental rights,
stemming from US efforts to extradite Mr Assange for journalism and
publishing that exposed US war crimes.” In the event that Payne took no
action on the matter, “people would want to know what you […] did to
prevent his death.”
In the addendum to the open letter,
further to reiterating the precarious state of Assange’s health and
medical status as a torture victim, the doctors elaborate on the
circular cruelty facing the publisher. An individual deemed “a victim
of psychological torture cannot be adequately medically treated while
continuing to be held under the very conditions constituting
psychological torture, as is currently the case for Julian Assange.”
Appropriate medical treatment was hardly possible through a prison
hospital ward.
A lesson in understanding mental
torture is also proffered. “Contrary to popular misconception, the
injuries caused by psychological torture are real and extremely
serious. The term psychological torture is not a synonym for mere hardship, suffering or distress.”
At Assange’s case management hearing
on December 19, restrictions on medical opinion were again implemented;
psychiatrist Marco Chiesa and psychologist David Morgan were prevented
from attending. Both had been signatories to the spray of open
letters. According to Morgan, he had hoped
to “provide some observations about Julian Assange’s health,
psychologically, and with my colleagues, physically.” Instead, it
transpired that access was denied, according to psychologist Lissa Johnson, “despite members of the public offering to give up seats for them.”
Cold-shouldering expert opinion can be
counted as one of the weapons of the state in punishing whistleblowers
and publishers. The State has always made it a bureaucratic imperative
to sift the undesirable evidence from the apologetic message. Accepting
Assange’s condition would be tantamount to admission on the part of UK
authorities, urged on by the United States, that intolerable,
potentially martyring treatment, has been meted out to a publisher.
*
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark
was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures
at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Featured image is from Medium
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2019
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