Today, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo of China for his fervent, non-violent struggle for human rights in his country. The prizewinner was unavailable to collect his prize in Oslo because the Chinese government has incarcerated him for a period of 11 years as punishment for a petition he circulated calling for a multi-party system in Chinese government. The Chinese government also refused to permit his wife to collect the prize for him, sentencing her to a period of house arrest, ostensibly for the precise purpose of keeping the notoriety of the Prize from influencing its population to celebrate a political prisoner.
A speech written by Liu Xiaobo and originally delivered before the court who sentenced him to his confinement was read at the Nobel ceremony. Liu, in the same spirit of compassion toward those who would oppress him that must inspire his long fight for rights, wrote, "Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy."
In a fit of rage over the selection of Liu Xiaobo for the prize, China prohibited media in the country from all reporting of the Nobel committee's decision. It sought company in its peevish indignation and lobbied other nations to boycott the prize, casting the prize as an symbol exclusive to western culture that should not be imposed on other nations with other values. In a desperate attempt to claim autonomy over the delivery of impressive prizes, it even invented a new one: the Confucius Peace Prize. Apparently, the first man selected to receive it turned it down, claiming that he'd never heard of it and didn't want it. Poor China. It probably wishes it could run away to Mars right now, where all that earthbound interest in human rights would be nice and irrelevant.
As the U.S. government prepares to level charges against Julian Assange, the founder and face of Wikileaks, for the website's distribution of leaked U.S. State Department cables, I can't help but draw comparisons between the two nations' churlish response to news that doesn't go its way. Just as China would prefer to silence a writer and activist seeking political reform, so too, it seems, would the U.S. prefer to prevent the public's further access to the materials received and shared by Assange. Even more interesting, aside from seeking transparency among governments as a fundamental necessity for true democratic governance, Assange really hasn't called for anything else. He may feel one way or another about U.S. power but ultimately, his views of the U.S., as an Australian citizen, are inconsequential. He cannot vote nor does he contribute to the American coffers as a taxpayer. And yet.
And yet, many American politicians have called him a traitor. (An impossible indictment as he is not a citizen of the country.) They have called him a spy, despite the fact that he was given the material by an American military service member who simply copied files onto a CD and there doesn't seem to be any allegation or evidence that he requested the material beforehand. And now, the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to indict Assange under an antiquated law whose origin is is just another eerie skeleton in the deep, dark closet of American history and, even worse, whose applicability to the Wikileaks case is tenuous at best. The Espionage Act of 1917 was the brainchild of a vulnerable and sick president, Woodrow Wilson, who sought to circumvent the First Amendment freedom of speech by criminalizing the protests of ordinary citizens-- educators, artists, activists-- against U.S. involvement in a war against Germany.
Now, the same poorly drafted, sadly intentioned, musty onion-skin Act has been slammed on the table before the ravenous, always combative powers-that-be-and-don't-want-to-not-be in the U.S. (Senators Lieberman and Feinstein both want to see it employed against Assange.) And the dust rising from its pages is helpfully obscuring the true facts of the Act's purpose and relevance to the matter at hand.
Like China, the U.S. apparently would prefer to sequester and confine the voices that speak against it. Interestingly, however, the voice of Assange is not the issue here. It's the documents that the U.S. government itself drafted and failed to secure from the prying and/or discontented eyes of its own employee. Between the two regimes, perhaps the greatest similarity is the wish to appear competent even when incompetence is revealed. And that, really, is just shameful. These governments don't appear to be "of the people" but rather "over the people." Therefore, it becomes necessary to shutdown any person, citizen or otherwise, who reminds the people of their obligation to become involved in government if they want it to change.
Pity. Really, it's a pity.
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