Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, has been denied bail in Britain after appearing in court over alleged sexual offenses. Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, which issued a European warrant for his arrest after complaints were made against him by two women.
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At present, Swedish authorities have not charged him with any crime. The complaints were initially filed over the summer but prosecutors dropped the case due to lack of evidence. A lawyer for the women filing the complaint appealed the decision to drop the case and after more than a month, Sweden issued a European Union warrant for Assange’s arrest, while he was staying in London. His extradition hearing must be held within three weeks. As of yet, Swedish authorities have still not filed formal charges against Assange.
The fact that Interpol conducted an international manhunt for Assange on this type of allegation is unprecedented and demonstrates that the real goal was to find some way to bring Assange into custody so that other charges could be filed against him. It was clearly a case of using this or any allegation as a pretext to take him into custody and hold him for further prosecutions. The allegations of sexual assault, having achieved this function, may become secondary or even disappear.
An open letter by Katrin Axelsson of Women Against Rape, a London based organization, states, “Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations.” The letter concludes with a strong statement on the political use of the rape charge:
“There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women’s safety. In the south of the U.S., the lynching of Black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don’t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.”
Ardin’s ties to right-wing anti-Cuba organizations
There is another fact about the rape allegations being made against Assange that is not being covered in the mainstream media. Anna Ardin, or Benardin, one of the two women who filed complaints against Assange, has ties to right-wing Cuban organizations. As reported by Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett in Counterpunch Ardin has ties to U.S.-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro articles in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. According to Shamir and Bennett, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that Misceláneas de Cuba is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties have been exposed (see here for details.) In addition, Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba, Ardin was connected with the anti-Castro group Ladies in White. This group receives U.S. government funds and the support of convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Most recently, Ardin has left Sweden and is no longer cooperating in the investigation of Assange.
Rape laws
It is important to clarify some aspects of the laws under which Assange may be charged with rape. Some commentators who defend Assange and WikiLeaks have made light of Swedish rape law, claiming that Assange might be charged with rape for a broken condom, chauvinistically downplaying serious allegations. In reality, Swedish law accepts that rape occurs any time after a party to consensual sex withdraws his or her consent. In other words, rape occurs if sex continues after one person says “Stop,” even if the encounter began as a mutually consensual act. This is different from the regressive rape law in the United States, where once consent has been granted, rape is not deemed to be legally possible, although there is some variation among states.
Why in the United States is rape not uniformly defined as an act of sex taking place without consent, regardless of whether consent had been granted previously? Such laws reflect archaic definitions of rape grounded in patriarchal conceptions of women (and our sexuality) as being the property of men, without independent rights or identity. In such a worldview, rape is seen primarily as an offense against the husband or father of the female victim, whose “chastity” has been violated, thus throwing into question the paternity of her children. Implied within this view is thus the idea that a husband cannot rape his wife; once a woman has consented to sex with a man, she is unable to refuse him in the future. Communists vehemently reject this view and uphold the right of women to determine when and with whom they will engage in sexual relations.
The political use of rape hurts women
It is not possible to know what actually transpired between Assange and Ardin or between Assange and the other woman who filed a complaint. Just because Ardin is an anti-communist with links to anti-Cuba pro-terrorist organizations does not preclude the possibility that she could have been raped. However, the circumstances seem highly suspicious. Rape, tragically, is a daily occurrence for women all over the world. Rarely is an alleged rapist, even one accused of the most brutal of assaults, made the subject of an international manhunt. Given the murky ties of Anna Ardin to the U.S. backed anti-Cuba terrorist movement, and her subsequent disappearance from Sweden, it is hard not to conclude that accusations of rape are being used for political ends in the interest of U.S. imperialism, which is furious at WikiLeaks’ revelations of their lies and thuggery. The use of rape accusations for political ends would appear to validate the stereotyped image of women as false accusers of rape, further endangering all women, who live under daily threat of sexual assault.
