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Ecuador Grants Asylum To Julian Assange
Several readers have submitted news that as expected, Ecuador is formally accepting Julian Assange's request for political asylum. paulmac84 writes "The Guardian are live blogging the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister's announcement that Ecuador is to grant asylum to Julian Assange. In the announcement Minister Patino said, 'We can state that there is a risk that he will be persecuted politically... We trust the UK will offer the necessary guarantees so that both governments can act adequately and properly respect international rights and the right of asylum. We also trust the excellent relationship the two countries have will continue.' The Guardian also carries a translated copy of the letter the UK sent to Ecuador regarding the threat to 'storm' the Ecuadorian embassy."
Also at Reuters.
The UK has stated it will storm the embassy by force, violating the Vienna Conventions. Equador has shown remarkable courage, doing something many in the international community doubted it could: It has stood up to tyranny. It has stated it will now bow under the threat of terrorism. It does not negotiate with terrorists.
Your move, Britain.
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What scares me most is the willingness the world seems to have to allow first the violation of Assange's human rights, then to threaten the 10+ international treaties (acts of hostility against a friendly nation) that the world has in place to protect people from such a situation. In the end we are left looking to a third world country, with a somewhat poor record itself, for those rights that should be universal. Australia should be ashamed of itself that he has to resort to Ecuador and not his home nation.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
You question Ecuador's record on human rights. Well, how about the US and the UK and for that matter Sweden? The US routinely tortures civilians with no right to process or a legal representative. And that is just the most blatant example.
The UK has a very long history of violent repression and total disregard for human rights. The only reason it has improved is because its power to abuse has been greatly reduced.
Sweden has shown itself to be a puppet state in the last ten years.
Nobody claims Ecuador is a saint but in the fight against evil you sometimes have to make strange bed fellows.
And good job quoting a guy working for a rightwing think tank. This was funded by the people who made the atom bomb. I want their opinion on human rights?
Willfull slaves such as you quake in their boots at the idea of anyone daring to rebel. You do not believe in the system that represents the status quo, you just are desperately afraid of any change whatsoever. You rather continue to be raped up the ass then risk any change because it might cause just the tiniest upset and then all hell will break lose.
Wikileaks was the only response possible in a world where western governments from administration to adminstration have sought to keep ever more hidden from fact in the name of national security. That this was a complete and utter lie is simply proven to anyone who isn't a sniffeling coward like the parent poster, NOT A FUCKING THING HAPPENED after the wikileaks. All that happened is that it became clear how much we had been lied to and how many of the rumors were true. People lost faces but no bases were attacked, no wars were lost. Just the powerful ended up with eggs on their faces.
And that frighens little dave shroeder, Wikileaks upset his world view. He believed Bush was protecting little dave and not at in it for himself. Poor dave is upset. Wikileaks must be shutdown so dave can put his head under the blanket again.
Well, fuck that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They offered for Swedish investigators to come to the embassy and interview Assange there - they refused.
To say I am ashamed of the actions the the Government to even threaten the Ecuador embassy with stripping it of its diplomatic status. For the alleged crimes Assange has committed this action is way way way over the top and obvious for all to see.
Well actually no. It proves that we will break international extradition and asylum treaties on a political whim...
Assange said he'd willingly go to Sweden to face charges if they guaranteed it wasn't a ploy to extradite him to the US. They could not guarantee that which is why he's seeking asylum. He's not trying to escape the allegations.
I think the guy is an asshat generally, but he's right on this one.
Well if it pisses off governments that aren't working the way they're supposed to work, then it can't be that bad what he's done.
In my book he's a hero. As a private person he might be an a**hole, but that doesn't change the service he's done the public (which is the more important thing anyway).
Here's someone the UK would not extradite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
I guess their laws mean nothing.
"That is the human rights violation"
No it isn't. No country should make deals with a criminal to get him to face justice.
If his suspected crime is rape he should expect to only be tried for rape.
What Sweden is attempting here isn't bringing a suspected criminal to justice, it's bringing a suspected criminal to a place where he will be abducted, tortured, and likely killed by a third party country that has no stake in the crime he is accused of.
Do you honestly think that is what this whole thing is really about? Please. How many other allegations of "sure I wanted to sleep with him, but I didn't want to go all the way" are actually pursued through Interpol and extradition treaties each year? This is an empirical question.
"The UK have no interest in him."
We have no interest in him yet we're willing to make the totally unprecedented move that defies all international convention and precedence on the issue of embassies of revoking the Ecuadorian right to an embassy in our country?
You're right about one thing though, he's not our problem, but if he's not our problem, why are we going to the level of creating a diplomatic shit-storm that undoes every bit of good-will towards the UK from the international community that the likes of the royal wedding and the olympics have built up? Why are we willing to have our embassies shut down across the globe in retaliation by Ecuador and it's allies over someone who is not our problem? Why don't we just let Ecuador fly him to Ecuador and let Sweden/Ecuador sort it out through their own channels?
"The UK *MUST* extradite him or their laws mean nothing."
No we mustn't, historical precedence, and international convention says that political asylum takes precedence. How can we possibly preach to countries like Iran over things such as holding British sailors or US citizens prisoner if we do this sort of thing? At that point we've lost the moral high ground on this and many similar issues and no one should or will listen to us ever again on them.
"The laws on embassies mean we *CAN* legally revoke embassy status from the building itself."
That's what government claims. No one else seems to be convinced. Even if we can the cost of doing so is so massive there has to be a question of why, unless the government is seeing absolutely massive pressure/threats from elsewhere - i.e. the US government. The cost of doing this is so large relative to just letting Assange go to Ecuardor that it makes no sense without some other massive external factor (i.e. the US).
"Even the Vienna convention says we can just expel all the diplomats (so long as we don't harm them, etc.) "at any time, and for any reason"."
Yes, but the actual process of expelling a diplomat means you have to give them chance to pack up and go, and again, the cost of doing so is so mind bogglingly large for Britain's reputation that it doesn't make any sense to do this.
You're using the word "must" an awful lot where you should actually have typed "in my opinion should" because there is no real grounding for your claim of must.
"He deliberately and knowingly breached UK bail and will have to stand up in court for that at some point, no matter what."
Again, this is rather forceful language - "no matter what"? are you sure about that? are you sure that he wont manage to get to Ecuador and 30 years down the line when global geopolitics have changed and anything Assange has done wrong is forgotten the charges are dropped? It's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened across the globe many hundreds of times before in geopolitics.
Unless you can tell the future and know something the rest of us don't you should stick to stating things as opinion rather than demanding that what you say is the absolute truth and nothing else could possibly be the case, as that just makes you look like some zealous preacher, you may think it somehow adds strength to your argument, but it really doesn't, it just makes you look like an unobjective wingnut.
Pinochet: well-known and repeatedly convicted dictator. UK verdict: let go free
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Augusto_Pinochet
Assange: not even charged, more than doubtful testimonies, a "crime" which does not even exist outside Sweden (sex without condom!). UK verdict: all kinds of threaten and proposal to violate Vienna Convention
Way to go UK, way to go.
The disinformation lies not in the falsehood, but the lack of relevance.
Also, Ecuador's free speech record is highly relevant:
Nothing you say following this colon shows any sort of relevance of Ecuador's free speech record. The only thing that matters is that the West is persecuting Assange and Ecuador is not. If you were Assange, who would you choose?
Nothing about seeking asylum in a country can be reasonably construed as an endorsement of that country.
Second, why are Western governments "persecuting" Assange (ignoring for a moment that if ANY Western government wanted Assange out of the picture, he would have been dead long ago) to whatever extent they are? Could it be that in free and open societies governed by the rule of law we don't allow individuals to unilaterally decide, on their own, what secrets of their own governments should be released? Intelligence operations and diplomatic work demand secrecy even in free societies. We allow for that as a people.
Ah, so you admit that this is prosecution is politically motivated. Good. I'm glad we can agree on that much.
do you really believe Correa and Assange are some kind of kindred spirits?
No I don't. Do you believe that the US and Saudi Arabia are some kind of kindred spirits? By your argument, the US is as smeared by its association with Saudi Arabia as Assange is by association with Ecuador.
Does our alliance with Saudi Arabia "absolutely smear" the US? If not, how can you say the same about Assange?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is no law, statute or convention that protects him in there, under asylum or not (he has NOT been granted UK asylum, and cannot leave the building to be taken anywhere else that might recognise asylum for him).
Article 29 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations states otherwise. In one sentence. No exceptions.
The UK *MUST* extradite him or their laws mean nothing.
No, the UK doesn't have to do anything. They're a sovereign power. And they're a sovereign power that signed a treaty stating that embassies hosted within their borders are involate, as is any person under their protection. And that treaty also stipulates that while they can expel the envoy, and all persons under their protection, they still can't touch them. Treaties supercede both UK law and EU law; that's the very definition of a treaty.
And for the record, there's no "temporary" dissolution of the embassy. Equador made their choice, they said the UK is wrong. If the UK resorts to military action, they're not setting up an embassy again -- they just wiped their ass with a treaty they signed, and it doesn't just affect Equador, but every treaty signee, who now has to consider that the UK has shown it will resort to violence to get what it wants out of the embassies. Many embassies will close in the UK, especially those without militaries of equal size. They'll be held as oath-breakers -- they won't be trusted for a long time with keeping their word on anything negotiated diplomatically. It might mean the UK can't do prisoner exchanges anymore with other countries, or get its own citizens out of a bind in those countries. The UK will have to resort to violence then to solve every one of its diplomatic problems, since their word is now worth nothing.
This is no longer about Assage; the UK has become militant, committed an act of terrorism, and is a threat to the national security of over a hundred countries. And if it doesn't back down, the damage will be severe, swift, and irreparable. As a citizen of the UK who supports this action, you need to be asking yourself how much extra taxation you're willing to bear for increased military expenditures, and how comfortable you are with the UKs more aggressive stance. And you might want to cancel any travel arrangements you have to... just about anywhere outside your country. If you run afoul of any laws while abroad, you might not have an embassy to help you sort it out. In fact, in some places, you may be arrested and held as a prisoner of war to be used as a bargaining chip to get their own citizens released from UK jails.
This is the price to be paid when you walk this path.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
How did we get to a place where states like Russia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are â" explicitly or implicitly â" thought to be more "free" by ANY measure than the US, UK, and Sweden?
by pursuing whistleblowers as spies instead of prosecuting the crimes exposed by the whistleblowers
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The irony, I suppose — irony being a common thread here — is that all the leaked cables showed is that the US has a thoughtful and dedicated foreign service. Unless, of course, you're one of those people who hates the US and believes that they revealed some dark and sinister secrets by taking a handful of cables out-of-context out of hundreds of thousands and using them to invent some kind of imagined scandal.
Pray tell, how can you take supplying underage sexual slaves to Afghan warlords "out of context"?
(yes, I do realize that it's not the US government - it is, however, a company hired by said government and paid by it, and no-one was prosecuted for this)