Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will become an honorary citizen of Rome by early next year following a vote this week by its local assembly, the city's former mayor Virginia Raggi said on Thursday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmus.org/post/1242124

Assange, 52, has been in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019 and is wanted in the United States over the release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables in 2010.

“Assange is a symbol of free speech which is essential for any genuine democracy,” Raggi, who ran Rome’s city hall between 2016 and 2021, told Reuters.

“He has been deprived of his own liberty for years, in awful conditions, for doing his job as a journalist,” she said.

Other Italian cities have taken similar steps. The northern city of Reggio Emilia granted Assange citizenship last month, while Naples is set to follow shortly.

  • @[email protected]English
    0•1 year ago

    Okay, you’re still taking my statements in the worst way possible and I don’t believe you’ve understood my point in all of this.

    If you want me to continue replying to any of this, I need an answer to this question: are you at all curious to understand what it is that I am trying to say?

    • @[email protected]English
      1•1 year ago

      I will take the lone downvote as a no then.

      It’s difficult position, being asked if you’re curious to understand the other person, because if you say no, then you’ve forfeited any right to reply. You are admitting bad faith.

      If you say yes, then you may be held to that standard, and the tactic of aggressively dictating the secret message you’ve divined between the other person’s words doesn’t work. If they tell you you’ve got their ideas wrong, then you have to listen, if you are in fact curious.

      To be clear, I am curious to understand. If I’m not I’ll stop responding. It’s hard to glean the argument I was facing here, it was full of contradictions like, “Sweden would never extradite” but also “they cannot guarantee they will not extradite.” I would’ve liked to understand that one in particular. If that person comes back and admits to having curiosity, I will ask them about it.