The case of Julian Assange and other whistleblowers tangentially tied to him shows how far the so-called champions of democracy and human rights in the west are willing to go in order to shut down conscientious individuals who expose their duplicity. Assange, the Australian-born activist and founder of WikiLeaks, an organisation formed in 2006 that specialises in publishing secret and classified information, has been a constant thorn in the side of the US and its ally states ever since 2010 when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified documents and graphic videos that revealed the true, horrific nature of the allied forces’ conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. With egg on its face, the US started to vilify Assange as a threat to national security and managed to root out the source of the leak: a US soldier then known as Bradley Manning, who has been sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment for “treason”. According to reports, ironically leaked on WikiLeaks, the US has indicted Assange through a “secret grand jury” and the charges against him carry a sentence of up to 45 years. The transparent will of the US is to have Assange extradited so that he can be prosecuted. Curiously, soon after coming to prominence, Assange was alleged to have committed sexual misconduct while in Sweden. In November 2010, Sweden issued an extradition warrant on charges of rape, since Assange was living in the UK. The warrant has been condemned by many as a circuitous strategy to extradite Assange to the US by way of Sweden, who has therefore fought tooth and nail to avoid being extradited. For his part, Assange insists he would go to Sweden for questioning if he has a guarantee he will not be extradited to the US; unsurprisingly such a guarantee has not been forthcoming. After exhausting all his appeals in the UK by 2012, Assange sought political asylum, which was granted to him by Ecuador in whose London embassy Assange has been living ever since to avoid being arrested. The UK government has been constantly policing the embassy to arrest Assange the moment he steps onto British soil, thereby effectively rendering Assange a prisoner in the embassy even though a sovereign nation has granted him asylum and by rights he should be allowed to leave. Thus Assange approached the UN regarding his detention. A UN human rights panel has come out with its findings and called for a restoration of his freedom, citing a number of procedural flaws in the case against him that make extradition infructuous. Unsurprisingly, both Sweden and the UK have rejected these findings. The derision of the UN panel by these two countries shows their characteristic arrogance and recurring disregard of international law. One has to ruefully conclude that with the UN toothless in the face of these powerful, hypocritical countries, there is no recourse for brave and morally correct individuals like Assange or Edward Snowden in this world. *