De la honte d’être un citoyen des États-Unis d’Amérique

De la honte d’être un citoyen des États-Unis d’Amérique

Il est vrai que la lettre que le secrétaire à la justice Eric Holder a adressée à son collègue russe, le 23 juillet 2013 (voir le 26 juillet 2013, sur Russia Today), a quelque chose d’à la fois pathétique et surréaliste. Holder plaidait auprès du ministre russe de la Justice la cause estimée honorable d’un transfert d’Edward Snowden de la Russie vers les USA. Holder assurait que, s’il était ainsi livré, Snowden aurait un “procès équitable“, qu’il ne serait pas exécuté puisque le procureur ne demanderait pas la peine de mort, enfin qu’il ne serait pas torturé (on suppose, dès sa réception par les autorités officielles US). Il est vrai qu’à sa lecture, on finit par penser qu’Holder semblait faire des concessions remarquables à la Russie pour obtenir gain de cause, ce qui conduirait à déduire qu’en général, aux USA, on fait des procès iniques et manipulés, qu’on exécute à tour de bras, et qu’on torture d’une façon régulière... Ce n’est pas loin d’être vrai, au reste.

Un activiste de gauche, Dave Lindorff, nous dit la honte qu’il a à être citoyen des États-Unis d’Amérique, en ce jour où le ministre de la justice du gouvernement de son pays écrit une telle lettre. Effectivement, à lire ce texte, on réalise la dégradation des conceptions et des mœurs politiques et juridiques qui affecte les USA, au nom de raisons aussi diverses que la guerre contre la Terreur, la menace contre la démocratie, la menace que font peser les révélations de Snowden sur la sécurité des USA, – puisque révéler qu’on espionne et surveille tous les citoyens des États-Unis constitue une menace contre leur sécurité... Cette mesure de l’évolution ainsi constatée est encore plus frappante avec l’administration Obama, qui est partie d’affirmations de remise en ordre de la loi, de la protection des libertés, de l’abolissement des pratiques illégales, etc., et qu’il lui faut pour soutenir sa politique faire un constant effort de communication orwellienne, sinon post-orwellienne comme on dit postmoderniste. (En attendant, la Maison-Blanche a pris la judicieuse mesure de supprimer du site du président le rappel des promesses de la campagne électorale de 2008, particulièrement la promesse de protéger les whistleblower. [Voir HuffingtonPost, le 26 juillet 2013.])

Voici le texte de la honte et de la colère de Dave Lindorff, le 27 juillet 2013, sur DissidentVoice.org. Ce dissident de gauche, ennemi naturel des dictatures et pseudo-dictatures, y compris celle qui régnerait en Russie comme il est en général conseillé de le croire dans ces milieux, en vient à suggérer in fine que la Russie est sans aucun doute plus attentive au respect des lois que les USA. Pour Lindorff, ce jour de la lettre de Holder fut celui où il eut le plus honte d’être un citoyen des États-Unis d’Amérique. Ce texte, qui n’est certainement pas excessif, fait mesurer l’effet que produit la politique US actuelle sur nombre de jugements aux USA, dans le climat exacerbé actuel et désormais tout entier tourné vers la questions des libertés individuelles.

«I have been deeply ashamed of my country a number of times. The Nixon Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was one such time, when hospitals, schools and dikes were targeted. The invasion of Iraq was another. Washington’s silence over the fatal Israeli Commando raid on the Gaza Peace Flotilla–in which a 19-year-old unarmed American boy was murdered–was a third. But I think I have never been as ashamed and disgusted as I was today reading that US Attorney General Eric Holder had sent a letter to the Russian minister of justice saying that the US would “not seek the death penalty” in its espionage case against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, promising that even if the US later brought added charges against Snowden after obtaining him, they would not include any death penalty, and vowing that if Snowden were handed over by Russia to the US, he would “not be tortured.”

»So it has come to this: That the United States has to promise (to Russia!) that it will not torture a prisoner in its control — a US citizen at that — and so therefore that person, Edward Snowden, has no basis for claiming that he should be “treated as a refugee or granted asylum.”

» Why does Holder have to make these pathetic representations to his counterpart in Russia? Because Snowden has applied for asylum saying that he is at risk of torture or execution if returned to the US to face charges for leaking documents showing that the US government is massively violating the civil liberties and privacy of every American by monitoring every American’s electronic communications.

»Snowden has made that claim in seeking asylum because he knows that another whistleblower, Pvt. Bradley Manning, was in fact tortured by the US for months, and held without trial in solitary confinement for over a year before being finally put on trial in a kangaroo court, where the judge is as much prosecutor as jurist, and where his guilt was declared in advance by the President of the United States — the same president who has also already publicly declared Snowden guilty too.

»It is incredibly shameful that we US citizens have to admit that we live in a country that tortures its prisoners, that casually executes people who are mentally retarded, who are innocent, who had defense attorneys who slept through their clients’ trials, whose prosecutors slept with the judge, who were denied access to DNA evidence that could have proven their innocence, or who were convicted based upon the lies of prosecutors and prosecution witnesses.

»This country’s “justice” system has become so perverted and politically tainted that the rest of the world, including Russia, knows that Snowden is telling the truth when he says he cannot hope to receive a fair trial here. Indeed, Congress has passed laws, and the President has signed laws, giving this government the power to lock someone like Snowden up indefinitely without trial, to torture him, and even to kill him, not through a jury decision on capital punishment, but simply on the basis of a secret “finding” by the President that he has aided or abetted terrorism.

»No wonder Russia and several other countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, have offered or are considering offering Snowden asylum. And no wonder that, in its obsession with getting its tyrannical hands on him, this government is willing to promise (for what a promise from the US government is worth) not to kill him or torture him. Shame and anger are the only appropriate responses to that letter from Holder.

»If this were a country that honored the rule of law, Attorney General Holder would not need to promise not to torture. He would need only to point to the US Constitution, with its ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” He would not need to promise a fair trial to Snowden, with no capital punishment on any charges. He could point instead to the Constitution’s promise of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial by a jury of the accused’s peers, to make the case against the granting of asylum.

»In such a country, someone like Snowden, with the help of a crack legal team, would have a fair shot at proving to a jury his innocence of the government’s frivolous espionage charges. He’d have a fair chance of convincing at least one juror of his absolute innocence of any crime, making his conviction impossible.

»But that is not what this country is, especially today...»

dedefensa.org