I started this article two days ago…
I wouldn’t really know how to start this article that I begin just as Julian Assange is about to land on the island of Saipan. The excitement for this crazy night, when I learned that Assange had been released from prison after more than five years in Belmarsh and twelve years in seclusion –counting the years in the embassy– is very difficult to describe after so many years waiting for this moment. To say that I feel a great joy is to say little. There’s something else you can’t explain, a vague feeling of grace that you have to keep quite. And yet, you can’t help but write this piece to recap what have been these years of struggle for freedom of expression.
I already say it in other articles: I have been with Amnesty International for thirty-five years— twenty as an activist— and the idea of human rights —still in full development— moves me as much as the horizon of believing in a society united by the ideas of truth and justice. It is not the first time that I have experienced the release of a prisoner after years of battle, but I have never felt the emotion as I have felt in the last June 25th, sharing with friends loyal to Julian who, from the whole world, have supported him, each one in his own way. They are “the winter soldiers” —as Stefania Maurizi says—, invisible fighters who have inspired me to continue keep fighting. And this sense of global collectivity has made the burst of joy unique and unrepeatable. But also because in my experience as a journalist and human rights activist I had never seen, from the political power, such a fury against the figure of one man who has been tortured for the simple fact of having told the world the truth.
And now we all have to continue. I look at my computer screen to see that there are ten minutes left until the jet — private, given that he has not been allowed to take a regular line— where Julian is flying will land; the same day of the hearing, where the nightmare must end before he will be with his family for good. Human resistance to pain is unknown. An enigma and only Julian knows what has happened trough. And I, who I see so many families and destroyed dreams, I am one of those who believe that Julian should return home. Absolutely no one can ask for anything else. Love, in addition to being a mystery, is a necessity: what, if not, moves the sun and the stars?
That is why I end this article, remembering all of us who have anonymously participated in this peaceful army in a relentless battle. Ordinary people. People that nobody knows, that you can meet just in a corner of a street any given day. And I have to say it, because it’s important: never, in my experience as an activist, had I seen anything like that. And that’s why I feel this indescribable emotion. Without this global, silent and continuous struggle, what happened today would not have happened. So much selfless love for one idea and for one man, because, after all, are the right ideas —and the men and women who make us believe in them— what make us improve as people, and give some of our time, a part of our life, for what we believe is fair and good. They are politics; I have no doubt about it. It is also humanity. But it is also a kind of love. And without that —John Pilger, now I remember you!— we would be nothing, and everything, in reality, would be more difficult. Now, I can say it: Julian is free, back home in Australia!
