There are moves afoot which show that the high-level conspiracy to hand Julian Assange over to U.S. authorities to be prosecuted for Espionage continues apace. On Oct 2nd, the Wikileaks Twitter account announced that U.S. aligned parties in the Ecuador National Assembly were planning to vote on taking steps towards stripping Assange of his Ecuadorean citizenship, which has acted as a legal barrier to his extradition to the U.S. There was a complete media blackout of this development in the English-speaking press. Not a single reference to the vote showed up in a Google news search.

The plenary session of the National Assembly to debate Assange’s citizenship occurred on Thursday 4th October. Due to the complete blackout in the Western press, we were only able to obtain information in English about the vote from a Twitter account from an Assange supporter in Ecuador called Jose Rivera. He tweeted that the U.S. aligned parties had failed in their efforts to review Assange’s citizenship (a step towards revoking it)  as they narrowly lacked the numbers necessary. As a consequence, the vote to review Assange’s citizenship status did not occur.

The review of Assange’s citizenship was initiated by Paola Vintimilla from the right-wing PSC (Social Christian Party). On September 20th, Vintimilla and the PSC fronted a press conference claiming there had been irregularities in the granting of Julian Assange’s citizenship which occurred in late 2017.

 

Whilst the vote failed to take place, rest assured the U.S. and its lackeys in Ecuador will not stop here in their efforts to get the votes necessary to strip Assange of his citizenship. After placing Assange in conditions akin to solitary confinement since March 28th, cut off from the internet and friends and family, Moreno has made it abundantly clear that he is desperate to sell out Assange to the U.S. in return for closer economic ties to the U.S.

As Wikileaks tweeted on August 31st, there has been direct economic pressure placed on Ecuador to hand over Assange in the form of one billion dollars from Goldman Sachs and the Inter-American Development Bank. Jimmy Dore and Abby Martin discuss what the Trump Presidency is doing to pressure Ecuador on the Dore show here.

New Zealand activist Alex Hills has prepared a list of Facebook contacts for Ecuadorian politicians if people wish to contact them directly to lobby on Assange’s behalf. They can be found here.

The attempt to strip Assange of his citizenship comes in the wake of the appointment of Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson as the new editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks in the past week. The fact that this development has occurred is further evidence of the deteriorating situation for Assange.

We must be prepared for the fact that if Assange’s citizenship is stripped – he may be evicted from the Embassy very quickly. Visit the Call out for Emergency Global Protests if Assange is Evicted to read how you can get involved in Emergency protests if this occurs. Only an ongoing, sustained, mass campaign of the youth and international working-class can defend Assange in the face of the imperialist conspiracy he faces.

Free Julian Assange!