Cuban civil society hails release of Julian Assange

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 2 (ACN) Cuban civil society expressed today its satisfaction for the release of journalist Julian Assange, after 12 years of political persecution.

Through an official statement, the Cuban Association of the United Nations, its Press Commission and the Cuban Journalists Association, highlighted Assange's firmness in denouncing the Pentagon's crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The release of Julian Assange is, therefore, a victory for the Australian journalist, who in his first statements reiterated the will to continue fighting for the defense of freedom of expression, the statement added.

The document said that this is a triumph of militant solidarity and of all those in the world who make their own the right of the people to know the truth and spread it.

Due to its importance, we transmit the statement of the Cuban civil society in its entirety:

The Cuban Association of the United Nations, in particular its Press Commission, and the Cuban Journalists Association, express their joy for the release of journalist Julian Assange, after more than 12 years of permanent political persecution through the most fabricated accusations.

His firmness in the right to freedom of expression and press, denouncing the crimes of the Pentagon particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, triumphed over the barbaric pressures of the U.S. government that had to give in to the signing of an agreement by which Assange assumed a partial guilt, more than paid off in his long and unjust detention.

With the arrival in his native Australia and the gathering with his family, colleagues and friends, more than a decade of physical and psychological mistreatment against the founder of WikiLeaks was over, even at the risk of his life, which generated a global movement demanding his release in which the Cuban civil society was actively involved.

The Assange case, as this battle became known worldwide, showed the extreme hypocrisy of the supposed freedom of the capitalist press and the double standards with which this ethical and political principle is used to judge the alternative models that oppose the domination of the media by the big transnationals of information and communication.

It also placed in the public eye in a sobering way the tremendous fickleness and inconsistencies of the bourgeois judicial systems, whose formal and apparent independence yields to the designs and blackmails of capital when any person, institution or state constitutes a threat to its power.

The release of Julian Assange is, therefore, a victory for the Australian journalist, who in his first statements reiterated his will to continue fighting for the defense of freedom of expression. It is also a triumph for militant solidarity and for all those around the world who make their own the right of the people to know the truth and spread it.