The open letter cuts across the toxic mixture of personal and political slanders employed by the liberal media, social democratic parties, including Britain's Labour Party, trade unions, civil rights organizations, right-wing feminists and various pseudo-left groups to justify their refusal to defend Assange.
The letter was issued at the height of Britain's general election campaign. It was sent to Labour's Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott. But she has refused to issue any statement whatsoever. Neither Abbott nor Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has once mentioned the world's most famous political prisoner during the course of the campaign -- a man incarcerated less than 12 miles from the Houses of Parliament. His name doesn't appear in Labour's manifesto, even when it pledges to protect "whistle-blowers" and bring in "a legal right of public interest defense for journalists."
Corbyn has tried to justify his refusal to defend Assange by citing the bogus sexual allegations made by two women in a case that was dropped for the second time in 2017. In April, he declared that if the case was "reinstated," then Assange "must answer those questions and those demands about the accusations made against him."
The Swedish investigation was dropped last week, after nine years in which no charges were ever brought. But neither this, nor the intervention by over 60 doctors, will prompt Corbyn to act in defiance of the state conspiracy against Assange.
For the ruling class, the persecution of Assange is the spearhead of a massive assault on democratic rights, aimed at destroying freedom of speech, illegalizing investigative journalism, intimidating and terrorizing critics, preventing the exposure of government crimes and suppressing popular opposition to social inequality and war.
The World Socialist Web Site insists that only the working class, the world's most powerful social force, has the necessary strength to oppose this and that it must do so independently of the old parties and trade unions.
Just as the capitalist class is using the persecution of Assange as the linchpin of its plans for dictatorship, so the working class must make his defense the focal point for a counteroffensive against militarism and all attacks on democratic and social rights.
Already there is a rising tide of international class struggle, strikes and mass protests against social inequality and corrupt government, which provides the powerful mass foundation for the struggle for Assange's freedom.
The defence of Assange must be guided by a global strategy that consciously links the fight to defend democratic rights to the growing social struggle of the international working class against capitalist exploitation and political oppression.
The Socialist Equality Parties, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, call on all those who fear for Assange's life and want to see a heroic and innocent man freed to join this vital struggle.
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