Julian Assange and the Mindszenty Case
Courageous
publishers like Julian Assange and principled churchmen like Cardinal
Jozsef Mindszenty are a rarity: Neither would be silenced; and both had to seek
asylum; but the similarity ends there, explains Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern Special to Consortium News
During World War II Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty was a huge
critic of fascism and wound up in prison. In Oct. 1945 he became head of the
Church in Hungary and spoke out just as strongly against Communist oppression.
He wound up back in prison for eight more years, including long periods of
solitary confinement and endured other forms of torture. In 1949 he was sentenced
to life in a show trial that generated worldwide condemnation.
Two weeks after the trial began in early 1949, Pope Pius XII
(having failed to speak out forcefully against the Third Reich) did summon the
courage to condemn what was happening to Mindszenty. Pius excommunicated
everyone involved in the Mindszenty trial. Then, addressing a
huge crowd on St. Peter’s Square, he asked, “Do you want a Church that remains
silent when she should speak … a Church that does not condemn the suppression
of conscience and does not stand up for the just liberty of the
people … a Church that locks herself up within
the four walls of her temple in unseemly sycophancy …?”
When the Hungarian revolution broke out in 1956, Mindszenty was
freed, but only for four days. When Soviet tanks rolled back into
Budapest, he fled to the U.S. embassy and was given immediate asylum by
President Eisenhower.
There the Cardinal stayed cooped up for the next 15 years.
Mindszenty’s mother was permitted to visit him four times a year, and the
communist authorities stationed secret police outside the embassy ready to
arrest him should he try to leave. Sound familiar?
Where is the voice of conscience to condemn what is happening to
Julian Assange, whose only “crime” is publishing documents exposing the
criminal activities and corruption of governments and other Establishment
elites? Decades ago, the U.S. and “civilized world” had nothing but high praise
for the courageous Mindszenty. He became a candidate for sainthood.
And Assange? He has been confined in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London for six years —from June 19, 2012—the victim of a scurrilous
slander campaign and British threats to arrest him, should he ever step
outside. The U.S. government has been putting extraordinary pressure on Ecuador
to end his asylum and top U.S. officials have made it clear that, as soon as
they get their hands on him, they will manufacture a reason to put him on trial
and put him in prison. All for spreading unwelcome truth around.
A Suppression of Conscience
One might ask, is “unseemly sycophancy” at work among the media?
The silence of what used to be the noble profession of journalism is deafening.
John Pilger — one of the few journalists to speak out on Julian Assange’s
behalf, labels journalists who fail to stand in solidarity with Assange in
exposing the behavior of the Establishment, “Vichy journalists — after the
Vichy government that served and enabled the German occupation of France.”
Pilger adds:
“No investigative journalism in my lifetime can equal the
importance of what WikiLeaks has done in calling rapacious power to account. It
is as if a one-way moral screen has been pushed back to expose the imperialism
of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare … When Harold Pinter
accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, he referred to ‘a vast tapestry
of lies up on which we feed.’ He asked why ‘the systematic brutality, the
widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought’ of the
Soviet Union were well known in the West while America’s imperial crimes “never
happened … even while [they] were happening, they never happened.'”
WikiLeaks
and 9/11: What if?
In
an op-ed published
several years ago by The Los Angeles Times, two members of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Coleen Rowley and Bogdan
Dzakovic, pointed out that — If WikiLeaks had been up and running before 9/11 —
frustrated FBI investigators might have chosen to leak information that their
superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.
“There
were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs
that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for
ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively. Lately, the
two of us have been wondering how things might have been different if there had
been a quick, confidential way to get information out.”
Fourth Estate on Life Support
In
2010, while he was still a free man, the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity
gave its annual award to Assange. The citation read:
“It seems altogether fitting and proper that this year’s award
be presented in London, where Edmund Burke coined the expression “Fourth
Estate.” Comparing the function of the press to that of the three Houses then
in Parliament, Burke said: “…but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sits a
Fourth Estate more important far then they all.”
The year was 1787—the year the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
The First Amendment, approved four years later, aimed at ensuring that the
press would be free of government interference. That was then.
With the Fourth Estate now on life support, there is a high
premium on the fledgling Fifth Estate, which uses the ether and is not
susceptible of government or corporation control. Small wonder that governments
with lots to hide feel very threatened.
It has been said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall
set you free.” WikiLeaks is helping make that possible by publishing documents
that do not lie.
Last spring, when we chose WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for this
award, Julian said he would accept only “on behalf of our sources, without
which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance.”
We do not know if Pvt. Bradley Manning gave WikiLeaks the
gun-barrel video of July 12, 2007 called “Collateral Murder.” Whoever did
provide that graphic footage, showing the brutality of the celebrated “surge”
in Iraq, was certainly far more a patriot than the “mainstream” journalist
embedded in that same Army unit. He suppressed what happened in Baghdad that
day, dismissed it as simply “one bad day in a surge that was filled with such
days,” and then had the temerity to lavish praise on the unit in a book he
called “The Good Soldiers.”
Julian is right to emphasize that the world is deeply indebted
to patriotic truth-tellers like the sources who provided the gun-barrel footage
and the many documents on Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks. We hope to have a
chance to honor them in person in the future.
Today we honor WikiLeaks, and one of its leaders, Julian
Assange, for their ingenuity in creating a new highway by which important
documentary evidence can make its way, quickly and confidentially, through the
ether and into our in-boxes. Long live the Fifth Estate!”
Eventually a compromise was found in 1971 when Pope Paul VI lifted
the excommunications and Mindszenty was able to leave the U.S. embassy.
Can such a diplomatic solution be found to free Assange? It is looking
more and more unlikely with each passing year.
If you
enjoyed this original article please consider making a donation to
Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm
of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. He is co-founder of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and also of Sam Adams Associates for
Integrity. He was a US Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA
analyst for 30 years.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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