Time magazine in the USA has made our beloved Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg “Person of the Year” for 2010 because lots of people worldwide spend at most a few minutes per week (according to statistics) on his social network site. All credit to 26 year old Mark Zuckerberg for spotting a big niche in the Internet market and making full use of it.
My “Person of the Year” is 23 years of age, Bradley Manning, held in solitary confinement for the past seven months for releasing to Wikileaks and Julian Assange, the hundreds of thousands of communications of the US government with its embassies worldwide and reports from the army engaged in the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Private Bradley, a soldier who served in Iraq, faces another 52 years in prison for taking freedom of information seriously by making available all of these files to the people who elected their government. Mercilessly cut off from the rest of the world, this young man lives 24/7 in a cold cell with only a single blanket of hard wool designed to rub on the skin with no pillow and no sheets. No Facebook, books, TV, newspapers for Bradley.
Why? The US authorities engage in these forms of torture until he signs papers agreeing to testify against Julian Assange , editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. A conviction will enable the US authorities to close down Wikileaks.
The US authorities have offered a plea bargain to Bradley. They say they will reduce giving him several decades in prison providing he testifies against Mr. Assange. Once he agrees, then it will be easy for the US Justice System to order the extradition of Julian Assange from Britain, who remains an obedient servant of US foreign policy or from Sweden.
Based in Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, Bradley appears to be in a very fragile emotional condition as word leaks out about his mental health. The months and months of isolation are taking its toll upon him.
Julian Assange said he had never heard of Bradley Manning until he read his name in the newspapers. He said his computer technicians designed Wikileaks technology so that the names of those who release information to the organisation can remain anonymous. Does it matter whether he knows him or not?
There are various reports of harassment by US law enforcement agencies upon those who speak up for Bradley. The rulings of the Patriot Act, initiated by former President George Bush after 9/11, gives licence to US law enforcement agencies to engage in surveillance, harassment and incarceration of US citizens and visitors to the USA. The Act allows the FBI to arrest, imprison with indefinite detention, deport suspects , search homes, emails, telephone calls and financial records without a court order.
While writing about incarceration in the US: More than one out of 100 of the adult US citizens are in prison with more than 92,000 young people held in juvenile prisons. There have been 387 executions in the USA in the past decade. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that one in every 32 adults in the USA is either in prison, gaol, on parole or on probation. That’s a staggering 7,225,800 Americans or non Americans at the end of December 2009. One in four prisoners throughout the world are held in a US prison. Would these figures qualify America as a police state?
Don’t be afraid to speak up. Authoritarian regimes know they do not need their citizens to agree with their treatment of citizens and visitors but only for their citizens to stay silent so these regimes can institute their policies.
Our hearts reach out to Bradley Manning and others like him in the US and other parts of the world who expose ruthless policies of governments. Bradley Manning is my Person of the Year.