UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has said that on the 31st of May he gave video interviews with both Sky News and the BBC on his findings that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the victim of psychological torture. As of this writing, footage of those interviews is nowhere to be found.

In response to a smear by virulent empire propagandist Idrees Ahmad about his conducting an interview with RT, Melzer tweeted that he has given interviews to both Sky News and BBC World, but that they seem not to have been aired.

“So the UN rapporteur actually appeared on the Kremlin’s premier propaganda network—yes, the propaganda network of the state that shoots journalists in the face—to discuss Julian Assange’s ‘torture’,” tweeted Ahmad, pretending to be under the illusion that UN experts are meant to remain exclusively loyal to a specific group of nations.

“For the record: On 31 May, I have also given similar exclusive TV interviews to both Sky News and BBC World on Julian Assange, but it seems they decided not to broadcast them,” Melzer responded.

Indeed, there is as of this writing no video footage to be found anywhere of Melzer’s interviews with either of these outlets. If you search for online video footage of Nils Melzer conducting interviews on this subject, you’ll find videos from RT and Ruptly, you’ll find his excellent interview on Democracy Now which we discussed recently, but you won’t find videos from BBC World or Sky News, nor any record of any video interviews ever having been aired.

So appears that these interviews were never aired at all, or, if they were aired, have had any record of them hidden from easy online visibility. In any case, this is a big deal. The BBC published one print article that contains a few small excerpts from a discussion with Melzer, but in terms of impact and quantity of information this comes nowhere close to a televised interview and online video footage.

The idea that anyone from the UN should only be giving interviews to western media outlets is of course ridiculous, and it’s made even more ridiculous by the fact that Melzer has been wide open to speaking with any platform that’s willing to circulate his findings, including my own.

“I stand ready to respond to uncomfortable questions, but then media must also stand ready to publish uncomfortable truths,” Melzer told me via Twitter when asked about the missing footage. He said the interviews were conducted with BBC World and Sky News via Skype, and lasted about five minutes each.

We may be sure that “uncomfortable truths” were indeed what came out in Melzer’s interview. Watch any existing video interview that Melzer has done on this subject and you’ll see how much damning information he packs into each minute of footage. You may also get a pretty strong suspicion of why establishment narrative management firms like the BBC and Sky News may not have wanted to publicize that footage.

“UK’s BBC News and Sky News censored exclusive interviews with UN Torture expert Nils Melzer showing overwhelming evidence that Assange has been deliberately exposed to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” tweeted the Defend Assange campaign in response to Melzer’s post.

“So the BBC and Sky kept the UN’s expert on torture off air, and viewers were denied the chance to hear that, in his expert opinion, the UK state has subjected Julian Assange to torture. I’m struggling to understand how that decision could be justified by any normal news values,” said British journalist Jonathan Cook.

Pressure must be put on these outlets to explain why they didn’t air these exclusive interviews, and they must be forced to give a response. Yes, any response we might get will be mealy-mouthed, they’ll make some huffy noises about limited air time etcetera, but they need to know that people aren’t just watching what they are airing with skepticism, they’re watching what they’re ignoring. When it comes to propaganda, lies by omission are even more pernicious than outright lies because they are difficult to confront.

Don’t let them fool you, this story is big. In terms of newsworthiness, it meets all the criteria and then some. Nils Melzer is great “talent” as they say; he is well spoken and interesting, and he has hugely important things to say about a hugely important situation. There is no reason to bin these interviews other than backroom politics. Demand to know what went on behind closed doors.

Julian Assange has been tortured. His health has been declining dangerously. The US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia are responsible for this. They did this to him because he published inconvenient facts about the powerful. These are truths. They are uncomfortable truths, but they are truths we all must ingest, process, and respond to.

UPDATE: Melzer reports that Sky News may have aired his interview on television, though it remains hidden online.

________________________

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35 responses to “BBC, Sky News Have Hidden Their Interviews With UN Expert On The Torture Of Assange”

  1. More importantly–Assange has stated that: “We must be there for him–as his replacement”. One man held the the global empire at bay for 7 years–what if we have two Assanges [“Whenever two or three of you come together in my name, I am there with you”]–what if we had 100–what if we had 1000–what if we had a 1,000,000.

    WE are all Gazans, we are all Julian Assange, we are all Senator Wellstone, we are all Donald Trump, we are all deplorables (progressive or otherwise) –we are all in this together: United we stand/divided we fall!

  2. It is heartwarming that people are coming forward for Mr. Assange. This article calls for the United States government to drop the charges against him.
    https://www.fff.org/2019/06/03/repeal-the-espionage-act/

  3. The world continues to spin, but not so fast as as gears of the Globalist social engineering network. If Russian based news reports anything negative regarding the torture of Assange, it will certainly be spun as further proof that he was “working with the Russians” as opposed to shining light on anything even remotely evil within the glorious Overlords of the West.

    1. exactly. Dick Cheney: “while they let analyze one of the many “realities” we created yesterday, we create many more new realities today.”

      endless analyses of the same thing, however articulate and aloquent they may be, get old pretty quick.

      BDS everything and everyone associated with the NWO everyday!
      it won’t kill you but it will kill your enemy! figuratively speaking, of course.

  4. Randy Kingston Avatar
    Randy Kingston

    More must be done to cobat corruption coming from these powerful countries especially the US empire. We must not hide in fear. We must fight bravely or our future will be in chains.

    1. HOW to fight is the question of the time.

  5. I really admire reading the truth in an article. It gives me a glimmer of hope for our species. The government of the United States of America is just what this writer says it is:
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/01/brainwashing-in-action-pence-hails-virtue-of-certain-war/

    1. reading shouldn’t give you any hope. acting on what you just read and understood should. act on your knowledge in any way you can.

  6. let this Wikileaks / Assange episode be the lesson: the neoliberal mouthpieces like Guardian, BBC, NYT, WP, NPR, Reuter, AP, as well as the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, do NOT serve the people (99%) but the owners of the NWO (1%).

  7. The Establishment fears the truth, and will do anything to suppress or distort it. What they fear is what we need to hear.

  8. Pop Quiz: Identify the following people …
    Dennis Halliday?
    Hans von Sponeck?
    ———————–
    Answers. Both were senior UN Diplomats who one after the other were assigned to post of UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad during the Iraq Sanctions era under the Clinton regime. Both resigned their posts in protest at the awful effects of denying food and key medicines were having on the Iraqi people. Both made very public statements about it. These statements were heard on outlets like Democracy Now, and of course the corporate tv channels largely tried to ignore them. RT didn’t exist at the time. A search engine does return a couple of stories in response to my query. Usually they do one small story on the stories that they don’t want to cover just so they can say that they did cover it. But you can bet that these were not the front-page, heavily sensationalized stories even to the level of the ones at the time that said Saddam was responsible for the deaths.

    1. richard le sarcophage Avatar
      richard le sarcophage

      Von Sponack appeared ONCE, that I heard, on Australian ABC Radio, just after Colon Bowell’s lie-fest at the UNSC. Von Sponack described how one installation that Bowell had claimed had been repaired and was back at work on WMD, was, in fact, still rubble. He knew because he had been on site very shortly before Bowell’s motion at the UNSC. At the next hourly news broadcast, that news had gone down the Memory Hole.

      1. Same era, different lie – pre-Iraq invasion, Murdoch’s Australian newspaper featured a front page photo of a ‘mobile chemical weapons factory’ in the Iraqi desert. My husband who worked in atmospheric physics and meteorology immediately recognised it as a mobile meteorology station.

  9. This is the ” extremely disgusting world ” that we now live within. Thanks Ms Johnstone.

    1. I do not watch any TV so I do not know if any of this news is being broadcast here. I do know that a local newspaper is covering it:
      https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-julian-assange-psychological-torture-20190601-ucli5342zrck5nbztmgfsmhily-story.html

  10. Tell me where I can find a UK group supporting Assange. I have asked you twice.

    1. Carolyn Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn Zaremba

      Go to the World Socialist Web Site. The SEP has held several rallies already. Our British section had one the other day. http://www.wsws.org

      1. Wikileaks dot org is another place to check. I found a website that is defend.wikileaks.org/2018/07/23/liveblog-julian-assange-in-jeopardy/ which is their LiveBlog. The page also has a home page and take-action page. The take-action page also lists some twitter handles to follow. If that doesn’t lead to UK group or groups, then I suspect someone there could help.

  11. Maybe the BBC and Sky News are prevented from publishing the interviews by a D-notice.

  12. Dr. William Fusfield Avatar
    Dr. William Fusfield

    Once again Caitlin gets out the TRUTH against the pathetic lies of the propaganda machine of the imperialist captured MSM. Keep up your GREAT work, Catlin!! In my opinion you are the finest political editorialist working anywhere in the world today!! Godspeed to you from one of your. biggest fans and supporters!!

  13. This indicates just how desperate the western transnational elite are to prevent the VOTERS of purported democracies from seeing REALITY, because the REALITY of the US behavior around the world is an international crime and very, very ugly. For just one example, take a look at the reality of the US’s invasion of Afghanistan.
    https://www.sunray22b.net/afghanistan_in_pictures.htm
    Again, what’s the US doing in Afghanistan?

    1. Zbig Brewzezinski answered your last question in the 70s, long before you asked it.

    2. richard le sarcophage Avatar
      richard le sarcophage

      At present they are transferring several thousand Daash butchers to Afghanistan to be used to attack Central Asia and the OBOR projects. Evil never rests.

  14. The MSM, world around for the most part, is mere government propaganda and should be disregarded.
    You’ve cut the cord. You’ve cut the cable. Now it’s time to quit the noise (and all the advertisements that are brainwashing you into buying a lot of useless crap).
    Let’s cut their income sources, and maybe they’ll cut the bullshit.

    1. ditto.
      BDS everyday! little organizing necessary.

    2. It may be taking place as we ‘speak’:
      https://youtu.be/2-t8okVeABY

      Big $$$ = Big MSM

  15. The purpose of the BBC/Sky interviews wasn’t to report news but to expose some embarrassing misstatement or other faux pas which they apparently didn’t get… Nothing to see here folks – move along now.

  16. Evil never rests. But neither do truth carriers. Thank you Caitlin Johnstone!

  17. the neo-liberal journalism is NOT sincere about the freedom of the press.
    Melzer has no teeth.
    Democracy Now is funded by George Soros, the worst neo-liberal parasite.
    UN is nothing but an instrument for the owners of the neo-liberal NWO.

    zizek, the brightest star of the neo-libs, says that only the pan-european left can save europe from the populism.

    people know that there is no real Left left in the neo-liberal world, to point to the Lefty alternative.

    so, nothing has changed, nor will it change until
    the real human beings across the borders get off our asses and do whatever we can, individually and collectively. we know what we want.

    1. If the devil quotes scripture, appreciate the scripture and divine the messenger’s intent, but not give any credit to the messenger (i.e the mainstream media) In the meantime, what Melzer did is historic, and he will become the next target of very powerful people. Use his courage to be encouraged to do more.

      1. melzer has no teeth. and everyone knows that. thus melzer risks nothing and gains the praise. those who actually DID SOMETHING, like that Spanish judge who found Kissinger types guilty of crimes against humanity and issued arrest warrants, all got sacked and disappeared.

        1. Carolyn Zaremba Avatar
          Carolyn Zaremba

          That same judge is working on behalf of Julian Assange right now.

    2. Carolyn Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn Zaremba

      On the contrary. Melzer’s interviews must be heard. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like DN. I don’t either, but Melzer is the real deal.

      1. melzer is good only for those who want to legitimize the UN as it has been and still argue that the NWO propagandists of BBC, NYT, and Human Rights Watch sincerely care about human rights.

    3. richard le sarcophage Avatar
      richard le sarcophage

      On FoxNews the resident psychos called the Democrazy Party ‘the Left’. Satire dies, yet again.

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