Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, And Hardly Anyone Is Talking About It By Caitlin Johnstone!!!!
(2019-05-29 at 07:20:14 )

Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, And Hardly Anyone Is Talking About It by Caitlin Johnstone

Julian Assanges Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that "Mr. Assanges health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him."

This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Mr. Samuelsons request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Mr. Assanges detention en absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations.

The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can not converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Mr. Samuelsons statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.

As of this writing I have been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline "Swedish court rejects delay of Mr. Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer“".

The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in headline, instead going with "Swedish court rejects effort to delay Mr. Assange hearing".

The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I have found so far which reports on Mr. Samuelsons statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article titled "Despite Mr. Assanges ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing" a few hours ago.

This news has been so under-discussed and under-appreciated as of this writing that I did not find out about it until hours after the story broke, and I am very plugged in to both alternative media commentary and WikiLeaks-related news.

A report that Julian Assange was so sick he could barely speak all the way back on Friday and we still have no news about how he is doing now should be hugely significant for everyone who cares about Mr. Assange, press freedom, government transparency or peace activism.

Another part of this story which has gone completely uncovered in all English-language media as of this writing is the news that Mr. Assange has actually been transferred to the hospital wing of Belmarsh prison.

This was reported by the Swedish outlet Upsala Nya Tidning, a newspaper published in the same district court Mr. Assange is scheduled to call in to for his hearing. The report was also based on a statement to the press by Per Samuelson.

The article reports the following, per machine translation:

"Wikileaks founder Julian Assanges Swedish lawyer wants the arrest hearing on Monday in Uppsala to be postponed. According to the lawyer, who has now visited his client in British prison, Mr. Assange is admitted to the medical department and was unable to make a call.

"Last Friday, Mr. Assanges Swedish defender, lawyer Per E Samuelson, visited his client in prison. In a letter to Uppsala District Court, the lawyer says that they met for just under two hours.

According to the lawyer, Mr. Assanges state of health at the meeting was such that a normal conversation with him was not possible.

Julian Assange is said to have been taken to the prisons ward, but there is no more detailed information about his state of health."

This story was picked up from Upsala Nya Tidning by Danish outlet Politiken, which per machine translation titled its story "Weakened Assange hospitalized in London prison: ‘-Impossible to have a normal conversation with him-".

These two news outlets are to my understanding as reputable as any other mainstream western outlet, yet they remain the only publications I have been able to find which are reporting that Mr. Assange has been hospitalized.

This is absolutely bizarre.

I have emailed Per Samuelson with a request to confirm the news that Mr. Assange has been hospitalized.

I will update this article if I hear back.

For Mr. Assanges supporters, one of the many frustrating things about his imprisonment has been the way he has been cut off from the usual means which used to be used to inform the public about his well being.

It used to be that news reports could be easily confirmed or refuted by people who had consistent access to Mr. Assange in some way by sources like the WikiLeaks Twitter account, but the people who operate that account do not have ready access to him anymore.

Now we are seeing all sorts of rumors circulating about how Mr. Assange is faring in prison, and it gets difficult to sort out fact from fiction.

It appears that it would be difficult to find a more reliable source on the state of his health than his own lawyer, however.

It has long been an established fact that Mr. Assange was in failing health while trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; doctors who visited him published an article with the Guardian in January 2018 titled "We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care - but he can not get it". Renata Avila, an activist and author who has worked with and written about WikiLeaks, tweeted in response to the new revelations, "He needed urgent assistance after his expulsion from the Embassy. Instead, he was not allowed to receive adequate medical treatment. In the case of Emin Huseynov ((1 yr at Swiss Embassy) it took at least a month of treatment to go back to normal. Imagine after 7 years! Brutal."

We have been watching the slow-motion assassination of Julian Assange.

They have been choking him to death by tactical psyops, siege tactics, and wilful neglect as surely as if they placed a noose tied around his neck, not just in Belmarsh Prison but in the embassy as well.

The only difference between his execution and someone on death row is the same as the difference between covert and overt warfare, which makes sense because the intelligence, judicial and military agencies who are carrying out his death sentence operate within the same power structure which carries out war.

First came the smears (propaganda), then came the siege (sanctions), and they staged their coup (dragged him out of the embassy) and now they have got him in their clutches and they can do what they want behind closed doors.

That is how you kill a nation while still looking like a nice guy, and that is how they are killing Mr. Assange.

Shout this from the rooftops.

Whether this media blackout is self-imposed or perhaps the result of the malicious use of a D-notice, we have to use everything in our power to get this information into the mainstream, and get people asking questions of the press and their local members about what the Dickens is going on in Belmarsh prison right now.

Mr. Assanges life may depend on it!!!

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