DONT MISS ANYTHING! ONE CLICK TO GET NEW MATILDA DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX, FREE!
Australian journalist Julian Assange remains locked up in a UK prison facing no British charges, having endured years of arbitrary detention and psychological torture. His extradition hearing to the United States is more of the same, writes psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson.
During SenateEstimates Hearings in the Australian Federal Parliament earlier this month,The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne and her ForeignAffairs colleagues were questioned about the treatment of Julian Assange duringhis recent extradition hearing in London.
The Minister and her two advisors explained to TasmanianSenator Peter Whish-Wilson that Julian Assanges treatment in London was nodifferent than that of other UK prisoners.
There was nothing to worry about, she assured herparliamentary colleagues.
Standard was the word repeatedly used, as though it hadbeen decided well in advance. Routine, in other words. Normal.
What the minster and her colleagues failed to explain,however, is that Julian Assanges treatment at the hands of Belmarsh prison authoritiesand BelmarshMagistrates Court is only standard and normal for prisoners charged withterrorism and other violent offences.
What is not standard or normal is for Walkley Award-winningAustralian journalists to be prosecuted as spies by the United States, and subjectedto maximum security conditions as a result.
What is not standard is for someone charged with nothing whatsoeverunder United Kingdom law to be treated exactly like someone charged with terrorism.
It is not standard, nor remotely normal, for journalistswith no criminal history, no custodial sentence, and no history or risk ofviolence to be detained under the harshest and most punitive conditions that UKlaw enforcement has to offer.
Nor is it standard for publishers to be held behindbullet-proof glass while on trial fortheir journalism, thereby preventing them from sitting with their lawyers,as if their journalistic skills might break loose and terrorise the court.
In fact, all of this is so far from normal that the International Bar Associations Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) issued a statement this week joining the widespread concern over the ill-treatment of Mr Assange during his extradition hearing, describing it as shocking and excessive. The Institute added that Julian Assanges treatment was reminiscent of the Abu Graib Prison Scandal, adding that with this extradition trial we are witnessing the serious undermining of due process and the rule of law.
So much for usual, fine and normal.
It is extraordinary that Australias Foreign Minister would consideranything about foreign governments treating an Australianjournalist as a terrorist and spy to be normal. Unless treating journalistsas terrorists and spies is the new normal in Australia.
We do, after all, already have 75pieces of legislation available to criminalise, prosecute, persecute andsilence journalists and their sources. We have secret trialson the way against WitnessK and DavidMcBride, which promise to scare off any other brave souls thinking ofexposing what the government does wrong. Even the New York Times has called usthe worldsmost secretive democracy.
I mean, who even knows what went on with Witness J?
Given Australias own conduct, the persecution of anAustralian journalist by a foreign state might suit the Australian governmentsagenda very nicely. It may even explain why Minister Payne was just as dismissiveof the torture of an Australian journalist as she was of criminalising journalism.
There could, however, be a more innocent explanation. Perhapsour Foreign Minister and her staff simply fail to grasp the gravity of what hasbeen going on in Belmarsh Magistrates Court.
To be fair, psychological torture is not well understood, nor are the facts of Julian Assanges case. So here they are.
The background
Julian Assange has been subject to a relentless propagandacampaign, so much so that many well-informed people are hopelesslymisinformed, both on the facts of his case, and the realities of psychologicaltorture. And yet, the truth is that the legal process underway in Belmarsh MagistratesCourt is yet more propaganda and yet more torture, aimed at criminalising journalism.
At the start of Julian Assanges extradition hearing onFebruary 24th, James Lewis QC, representing US prosecutors, addressednot the court, but, astoundingly, the media.
In his opening address to launch the press freedom test-caseof a lifetime, Mr Lewis QCinstructedthe media as to what it should and should not say. The irony, sadly, seemedlost on both sides.
Mr Lewis QC took particular care to instruct the media not to focuson the US war crimes that Julian Assange exposed. Sure we murdered some folks was the subtext. But your job is to bury it.
From that point onwards, Julian Assange was a prop in adrama designed to make him look and feel dangerous and violent. While thoseresponsible for the crimes that he exposed sat back and watched. From a comfortabledistance.
Moving Julian Assanges trial from a court in which extradition cases are normally heard Westminster Magistrates Court to a counter-terrorism court attached to Belmarsh prison provided the ideal stage for such a drama to unfold. It enabled keeping Julian Assange behind bullet-proof glass flanked by security like Hannibal Lecter, as opposed to the Nobel Peace Prize nominee that he is.
Having demonised Middle Eastern men as terrorists since9/11, enabling their abuse in rights-free hell-holes suchas Belmarsh prison, authorities are now expanding that abusive license to encompassjournalists, via Julian Assange.
Moving Julian Assanges trial to a counter-terror court alsoenabled denying him his right to sit with his lawyers like a dignified humanbeing. Because, along with handcuffing and strip-searching people repeatedly,all of this is usual in Belmarsh prison, which is known as BritainsGuantanamo.
Even worse, hearing the extradition request in a counter-terrorismcourt turned the propagandistic show-trial into yet another instrument ofpsychological torture.
Psychological torture? What psychological torture? How?
The abuse of thelegal system to psychologically torture Julian Assange
Since 2010, the pursuit of Julian Assange for his publishing activities has involved psychological harm inflicted by states, judiciaries and the media. This harm has been so sustained and severe that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, along with medical experts in torture, have deemed it to constitute psychological torture.
For her role in exposing the evidence of war crimes that Julian Assange published, and refusing to testify against Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning is also being psychologically tortured. Again. News broke today that she hasattempted suicide.
According to the UN torture mandate, under international lawpsychologicaltorture entails all methods, techniques and circumstances whichintend or are designed to purposefully inflict severe mental pain or suffering.
In addition to this, prolonged psychological torture causesphysical and medical harm, as described in thisexplanatory medical addendum submitted to the Australian Government. Themedical harm from psychological torture occurs by virtue of incessant andextreme activation of stress physiology, with potentially grave medical andneurological consequences; and altered brain activity.
In Julian Assanges case, the severity and duration of hispsychological torture has been such that his survival is currently at risk, asthe UNRapporteur on Torture and now over 170 doctors and psychologists, of whichI am one, have warned.
Alarmingly, Julian Assanges treatment in BelmarshMagistrates Court last month unnecessarily and gratuitously extended everyaspect of the psychological torture that he has endured for years.
Julian Assanges persecutors can get away with this in plainsight because the methods of psychological torture are a well-kept secret.Unlike simulated drowning, hooding or stringing people up naked, the techniquesof psychological torment cannot be photographed, and are difficult to see unlessthey are named.
Accordingly, in the interests of helping onlookers, including government ministers, to recognise the brutality unfolding before their eyes, the key instruments of Julian Assanges psychological torture are as follows.
A decade of public humiliationand shame
Public shame and humiliation are among the most aversiveexperiences for human beings. Even subtle ostracism by strangers activatesbrain centres involved in physical pain. In Julian Assanges case, the campaignof public vilification has been extreme and relentless.
Julian Assange has been branded a rapist on a world stagefor many years, using the Swedishand British judicial and law enforcement systems as tools to manufacturethe falseperception that women in Sweden had accused him of rape. In reality,neither woman did, and no charges were ever laid.
Yet non-existent rape charges have been wielded against Julian Assange for a decade, enabled by grossly inaccurate and misinformed media coverage. The campaign of defamation has been augmented by other unfounded slurs, including tarring him as a terrorist and a foreign agent.
The consequently degraded and debased public image of JulianAssange has made it possible to hold him in maximum security prison despite hislack of violent offending, and force him to sit behind bullet-proof glass, unableto participatein his own trial, thus extending the propagandistic depiction of him as amenace and a criminal.
Such public disparagement and debasement is a recognised methodof psychological torture in which the proactive targeting of victims sense ofself-worth and identity [occurs]through the systematic and deliberate violationof their dignity [using]derogatory or feral treatment,ridicule, insults, verbal abuse [and]public shaming, defamation, calumny [or]vilification.
Julian Assange has experienced, and continues to experience, all of these.
Extreme threat andintimidation
Within the isolating environment of public abandonmentfostered by the defamation campaign, Julian Assange has been under incessantthreat of extradition to the United States, where a whole ofgovernment operation against him has been underway since 2010. This operation has included:
Prominent US figures and officials have called for JulianAssanges assassinationon numerous occasions.
The UN torture mandate writes, Perhaps the most rudimentary method of psychologicaltorture is thedeliberate and purposeful infliction of fear the prolonged experience of fear can be more debilitating and agonizingthan the actual materialization of that fear. Especially credible andimmediate threats have been associated with severe mental suffering,post-traumatic stress disorder, but also chronic pain and other somatic (i.e.physical) symptoms.
Julian Assanges extradition hearing represents an undeniableintensification of the credible and immediate nature of the threats he facesand the fear they can invoke.
During proceedings the court has heard that the US government hadentertained plans to kidnap orpoison Julian Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Previously, the UN WGAD, the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others have all warned of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment should Julian Assange be extradited to the United States. As he attends court between episodes of handcuffing, strip-searching and waiting endlessly alone in his cell, the life of horrors awaiting him in the United States must plague Julian Assange. How could it not?
Being renderedhelpless in the face of threat
Helplessness in the face of threat and danger is extremely tormentingfor human beings. In fact, powerlessness against abuse is considered a definingfeature of psychological torture. In Julian Assanges case, at every turn,in the face of grave threats to his life, person and liberty, under pursuitfrom the worlds most powerful and heavily-resourced nation, Julian Assange hasbeen prevented from acting in self-defence.
For example, oninsistence from the CrownProsecution Service, and in violation of usual procedure, Swedishprosecutors prevented Julian Assange from answering the allegations against himin Sweden, and therefore protecting himself against onward US extradition, by refusingto interview him in the UK.
This was not typical procedure. In other cases, Sweden conductedinterviews abroad on 44occasions during the same period. Sweden also refused to guarantee againstonward US extradition, making it impossible for Julian Assange to travel toSweden to clear his name without placing himself at risk.
Now, in Belmarsh prison, Julian Assange has been preventedfrom consulting with his lawyers regularly, at times only meeting them twice amonth, and he is prevented from sitting with them in court to give instructions.
On top of all of this he has been forced to attend courtwithout reading documents in the case against him. During extraditionproceedings, his legal notes were confiscated by prison authorities.
All of this while facing 175 years in US prisons under Special Administrative Measures.
Psychologically it is akin holding someone bound and gagged inthe basement while his assailant stands outside sharpening their knives. JulianAssange has endured the torment of such powerlessness, immobilisation andhelplessness since 2010.
There is nothing usual about any of this, whether inBelmarsh supermax or elsewhere. Alldefendants have the human right to prepare a defence. Those denied it, whether theyreJulian Asssange or someone else caught up in a counter-terror vortex, are notreceiving usual rule-of-law, standard, normal democratic fare.
Rendering any defendant this defenceless, let alone in a historic test case, is cruel and it is unusual.
Medical deprivationand neglect
While under such extreme and ceaseless stress, JulianAssange has been denied access to adequate medical care. This denial hasincluded obstruction of treatment for serious physical illnesses datingback to 2015, including painful conditions requiring imaging technology andpossible surgery, such as exposed dental pulp. So serious is the medicalneglect that over 170 doctors and psychologists from 25 countries have written to the UK and Australian governments demandinghis urgent transfer from prison to hospital as a life-saving measure.
As one of those signatories, I and others wrote recently in The Lancet, We havereal concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could diein prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose. Weadded, Since doctors first began assessing Assange in the Ecuadorian embassyin 2015, expert medical opinion and doctors urgent recommendations have beenconsistently ignored. Abuse by politically motivated medical neglect sets adangerous precedent, whereby the medical profession can be manipulated as apolitical tool.
That The Lancetwould publish such statements from doctors, denouncing state-sponsored, politically-motivatedmedical abuse of a publisher in the UK is unprecedented. Moreover, JulianAssanges medical neglect continues in Belmarsh prison to this day. He has notonly continued being denied the medical care that a complexcase such as his requires, but has reportedly been denied his rights to exercise,both in the prison gymnasium and via daily walks in a small outside space.
In other words, on top of medical neglect, positivehealth-promoting behaviours as simple as walking have been withheld from JulianAssange. Importantly, exercise, like social contact, is a critical natural antidoteto depression. As the court heard during his extradition trial, Julian Assangesuffers from clinical depression to the extent his suicide risk is high.
It is cruel, unnecessary and reckless to deprive him of the antidepressant and stress-relieving effects of exercise in this context, particularly while he is exposed to such excessive levels of helplessness and threat. Julian Assange is also at risk of bone problems as a result of years of confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy without sunlight. Depriving him of exercise and outdoor activity adds further gratuitous harm to this existing regime of deliberately inflicted ill-health.
Solitary confinementand isolation
Julian Assange is currently being held purely for remandpurposes, so that the US government can re-define journalism as espionage. Evenwithin that abomination of the law, there is no reason whatsoever to remand himin a maximum security facility for violent offenders. Unless, of course, the UKGovernment has redefined journalism as grievous bodily harm.
In a significant escalation of his psychological torture,remanding Julian Assange in Britains Guantanamo has facilitated holding him inisolation for up to 23 hours a day. This is a very serious matter where health,mental health, physical health and torture are concerned.
Prolonged social isolation is extremely psychologicallydamaging for human beings. Meaningful human social contact is a minimumnecessary condition for human psychological and mental functioning, much asfood and water are minimum necessary requirements for physical functioning.
Accordingly, as we explained in our doctors letterto the Australian Government, prolongedsolitary confinement does not simply cause loneliness, boredom and malaise. Itreduces neuronal activity in the brain, leading to potentially severe andlong-lasting brain damage, including cortical atrophy and decrease in the sizeof the hippocampus, the brain region related to learning, memory, spatialawareness and emotion-regulation, along with a 26% increased risk of prematuredeath.
Solitary confinement can therefore cause significantcognitive impairment, including memory, attention and concentration deficits,which can prove permanent after just a few weeks of isolation. In light of itsseriousness, under international law prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 consecutive days is consideredtorture.
Despite this, or because of it, Julian Assange has been held in 22-23 hours of isolation per day for many months.
Accordingto the UN torture mandate, A routine method of psychological torture is to attack the victims needfor social and emotional rapport. Persons deprived of meaningful social contact can quickly becomedeeply destabilized and debilitated.
Moreover, depriving someone of social contact for anextended period and then forcing them to stand trial is the psychologicalequivalent of depriving them of food and water and forcing them to run amarathon. For this reason alone Julian Assanges extradition hearing should besuspended on urgent medical grounds.
Instead, Julian Assanges isolation has been cruelly perpetuated in court. Former UK diplomat Craig Murray wrote that Julian Assange is not [even]permitted to shake hands or touch his lawyers through the slit in the armoured box. [Court authorities] are relentlessly enforcing the systematic denial of any basic human comfort, like the touch of a friends fingertips or the relief that he might get just from being alongside somebody friendly. A tiny bit of human comfort could do an enormous amount of good to his mental health and resilience. They are determined to stop this at all costs.
Constant surveillance
Julian Assange has been under 24/7 surveillance for years. Wewrote in The Lancet, He was surveilled in private and with visitors,including family, friends, journalists, lawyers, and doctors. Not only were hisrights to privacy, personal life, legal privilege, and freedom of speechviolated, but so, too, was his right to doctorpatient confidentiality.
Like the otherabusive psychological tactics deployed against him, surveillance isrecognised as a form of psychological torture. The UN torture mandate writesthat constant audio-visual surveillance, through cameras, microphones, one-wayglass, caging and other relevant means, including during social,legal and medical visits, and during sleep [and]personal hygiene is used inpsychological torture regimes in order to attack a victims dignity, privacyand sense of identity.
Even as he fights for his life and liberty in court, when the privacy of lawyer-client privilege could not matter more, Julian Assange is surveilled. Whatever communication he might attempt with his lawyers can be seen and heard by nearby security staff, US prosecutors and intelligence personnel.
Arbitrariness
Julian Assange has been subjected to arbitrariness for thepast decade. As a tool of psychological torture, according to the UN torturemandate when administrative or judicial power is deliberately misused forarbitrary purposes, and when the relevant institutional oversight mechanismsare complacent, complicit, inaccessible or paralyzed to the point ofeffectively removing any prospect of due process and the rule of law [this]fundamentally betrays the human need for communal trust and, depending on thecircumstances, can cause severe mental suffering, profound emotionaldestabilization and long-lasting trauma.
As doctors explainedto the Australian Government late last year, Arbitrariness attacks a personssense of control, agency and volition, to the extent that the will to liveitself can be fatally undermined. Extreme helplessness, hopelessness,destabilisation and despair, all correlates of suicide, are natural humanreactions to an environment that is persistently unpredictable, unresponsiveand hostile, regardless of a persons actions or efforts to influence it.
Having inspected the conduct of Sweden, the UK and the US,the worlds designated authority on arbitrariness, the UN Working Group onArbitrary Detention (WGAD), ruled thatJulian Assange has been arbitrarily detained since 2010. In 2019 the WGADfurther statedthat his detention in Belmarsh Prison constitutes ongoing arbitrary deprivationof liberty.
As part of that arbitrariness, rule of law and due processhas been consistently violated in pursuit of Julian Assange, as both the UN WGADand the UN Rapporteur on Torture have stated on numerous occasions and detailedin numerous letters and reports.
The first four days of Julian Assanges extradition hearing were nothing if not a bonanza of unbridled arbitrariness. Aside from preventing him from participating in his own trial, the prosecution case was a Frankensteins monster of dismembered and reassembled parts of different treaties and acts, in which inconvenient sections of the treaty under which extradition is being sought were hacked out, and an excised section of another extradition act was sutured in, to suit US objectives.
Moreover, according to US prosecutors, US law bothsimultaneously applied and did not apply to Julian Assange: as a non-US citizenhe is subject to the US Espionage Act but not the protections of the USConstitution.
If we set this Frankensteins monster loose, the US will beable to arbitrarily apply and withhold whatever sections of its own domesticlaws and treaties it likes to foreign citizens in foreign lands, while ignoringinternational and human rights law entirely.
On the question of whether Julian Assange could sit with hislawyers, the Magistrate reportedly entered the courtroom with her decision alreadywritten down, before hearing any arguments on the matter. The legal precedentsand principles advanced by Julian Assanges legal team, it seems, wereirrelevant. The decision was pre-ordained.
Worst of all, the hearing is going ahead despite evidencethat the CIA spied illegally on JulianAssanges meetings with his lawyers pre-trial. How can that be? He has beendenied the most basic rights as a defendant: lawyer-client confidentiality. Itis arbitrary in the extreme.
As if to rub our noses in it, after preventing Julian Assange from speaking with his lawyers in court, the magistrate instructed him to speak through his lawyers. Authorities, it seems, have grown so accustomed to abusing Julian Assange that they forget to even pretend that his hearing is anything other than a show trial.
What everyone shouldknow
All these years of abuse cannot help but take their toll onJulian Assange. He is clearly an extraordinarily strong and resilientindividual, but he is still a human being. Just as the human body inevitablysuccumbs to starvation and assault, so it is with the human mind.
It was foreseeable after years of psychological torture that the Belmarsh Magistrates Court would hear, as it did, that Julian Assange is suffering from trauma and clinical depression, with a high risk of suicide.
It was equally foreseeable that subjecting Chelsea Manning to the same abuses that drove her to suicidalitybefore, and which had been denounced by the UN Rapporteur on Torture at the time, would again render death more appealing to her than a life of torment.
When making the case for their client to sit with them,Julian Assanges lawyers remindedthe magistrate of this, saying, Mr Assange is a vulnerableperson. You are aware of the psychological issues in this case.
The magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser, addressed her reply toJulian Assange: I have not been told of any particular aspect of yourcondition which requires you to leave the dock and sit with your legal team.
Excerpt from:
The Julian Assange Show Trial, And The Not-So-Subtle Art Of Normalising Torture - New Matilda
