Interview with Patricio Mery Bell, journalist, Chilean activist and former adviser to Rafael Correa.
Cristina Mirra: Can you tell us about the work of Assange and Wikileaks?
Patricio Mary Bell: Julian Assange is a hero of freedom of expression and the right to receive truthful information. Wikileaks marks a before and an after in the way of doing journalism. It showed us the deep state of bloodthirsty governments’ “Deep State”. Society has the right to know the truth with the least possible manipulation of information. The big media depend on and are part of the financial power, they are instruments of defense-and-attack of an unfair model, which keeps half the population of the planet, or even more, in poverty, victims of flagrant crimes against human rights. Behind all this is the system of concentration of power and wealth. The wildest face of the system that is protected by corporate journalism. Pseudo-truth traffickers. In this context Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the other side of the coin—courageous journalism—committed only to the truth and to a true information society.
How much less would we know about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the other scenarios, without them? We wouldn’t know anything. Remember that these wars have had the encouragement and softening of the media that have led our peoples to live by loving the oppressor and hating the oppressed. We live in a historical era where the communicative battle has just begun. Never before have so many people had access to information as now. Today every citizen can be a channel of communication, a mechanism of social control, and this despairs the system that needs to keep us as idiots, manipulated and enslaved of his economic interests. Truth is freedom and lies are slavery. The struggle between the U.S. government and Huawei, Julian Assange’s imprisonment, censorship and media self-censorship are battles of the same conflict. Two cultural visions are confronted: multilateralism and peace against imperialism and violence. Julian Assange, as in the account of that little boy who shouted to everyone that the King walked naked, dared to prove that the “King of Liberty” was nothing more than a bloodthirsty criminal.
Why does Assange scare America so much? The system is always wrong, trying to kill the messenger to prevent the message from reaching people. The only thing he does, every time he tries, is enlarge the messenger and catapult him to glory. Julian Assange has already defeated them, even though he had to sacrifice the most important thing in life, freedom. His way of handing us the truth will make history.English translation.
What do you think of the Iraq war?
I think all wars are ugly. Iran, Libya and Afghanistan are the same thing. A political strategy used for commercial purposes to appropriate oil from those countries. No country that has been invaded by the United States is better off than it was before. What effect has this conflict had on Iraq? Directly the generation and financing of radicalized groups that have carried out terrorist attacks in Europe. The social chaos in Iraq, the destabilization of the continent and the proliferation of war as a method of control.
What do you think of Blair’s apology when he admitted that there was a lack of evidence, namely weapons of mass destruction?
Late and hypocritical. These excuses appear only after the world has discovered the truth. Assange’s story refers to the freedom of investigative journalism, which wants to inform the general public.
Why do you think Assange’s figure is particularly popular in Latin America? Because we know how much damage a lie can cause, the Condor plan was promoted by bad press, justified by criminals who owned the media. One of the most emblematic cases we have experienced in Chile with the participation of media such as El Mercurio and its owner Aguston Edwards, in crimes against humanity. Also because Assange was welcomed as a political refugee by former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in his country’s embassy in the UK. Ecuador and South America have advocated truth and freedom of expression. Unfortunately, this dignified position in front of the world was thrown in the trash by the government of Lenin Moreno, who is an official of the capitalist system. One day he will have to answer to justice for delivering Julian Assange and for violating international human rights laws and conventions.
translation in english by J. Jill
