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| - Fact Check: 2011 Assange statement on Afghanistan FALSELY attributed to Ukraine war
India Today found that while Julian Assange said something similar, it was in 2011, and it was about the US-Afghanistan war.
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India Today Fact Check
The quote is old. Assange made the statement in 2011 in the context of the US-Afghanistan war, and the word "Afghanistan" was replaced with "Ukraine" in the viral quote.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a prominent advocate for transparency, has on several occasions voiced opposition to wars. Now, a statement allegedly made by Assange on the Ukraine-Russia war is going viral on social media.
The quote goes: “The goal is to use Ukraine to launder money from the United States and Europe through Ukraine and back into the hands of the transnational elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war." The archived version of one such post containing this alleged Assange quote can be seen here.
India Today found that while Julian Assange said something similar, it was in 2011, and it was about the US-Afghanistan war.
Our Probe
Using a keyword search, we came across a tweet made by the official Wikileaks account in 2021 that contained a video featuring Assange. The tweet noted that Assange made this statement in 2011 and verbatim states his utterance as: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war."
Even in the video, Assange can be seen saying Afghanistan and not Ukraine while making the statement.
We found the same video shared by TRT World, a leading Turkish media outlet, in 2021. Here too, Assange could be heard saying Afghanistan instead of Ukraine. The post here also notes that this statement was made by Assange in 2011, more than a decade before the current Ukraine-Russia conflict started.
We also found an extended version of Assange’s video on YouTube, uploaded in 2012. The caption stated that Assange made the statement during an event called “Stop the War” on October 8, 2011.
Founded by British political activist, academic, and journalist John Rees, the Stop The War Coalition is a group in Britain campaigning against the wars. In 2011, Julian Assange attended a demonstration on the tenth anniversary of the Afghanistan War in Trafalgar Square, London.
We also found a photo of Assange on stock images website Alamy, titled, “Julian Assange joined the demonstration to stop the war and he gave a speech in Trafalgar Square,” where he could be seen wearing the same clothes as in the video — further corroborating his presence at the event.
We also checked if Assange had made any statements on the Ukraine-Russia war. However, we couldn’t find anything. Assange has been detained in the maximum security Belmarsh prison in London for over four years, where his visitation rights are restricted. Earlier this year, representatives of Reporters Without Borders were blocked from meeting him in prison.
Thus, it’s clear that an old Assange quote about Afghanistan was modified to make it look like his opinion on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
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