WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Sues Ecuador For 'Violating His Rights' (sky.com)

Julian Assange is suing Ecuador's government for violating his "fundamental rights and freedoms," despite the fact he is still being sheltered in the country's UK embassy. From a report: It comes after Ecuador cut off communications for Mr Assange, who has been living inside the country's London embassy for more than six years. Baltasar Garzon, a lawyer for WikiLeaks, has arrived in Ecuador to launch the case, which is expected to be heard next week in a domestic court. WikiLeaks claims Mr Assange's access to the outside world has been "summarily cut off" and says Ecuador has threatened to remove the protection he has had since being given political asylum. The site said Ecuador's government has refused to allow a visit by Human Rights Watch general counsel Dinah PoKempner and prevented several meetings with Mr Assange's lawyers. A statement said: "Ecuador's measures against Julian Assange have been widely condemned by the human rights community."

Comments

Sue him back over treatment of his cat

[jfdavis668]

Ecuador should sue him back over the way he is mistreating his cat.

Re:Sue him back over treatment of his cat

[Anonymous Coward]

#MeowToo

It's stupid

[The Grim Reefer]

At this point it's unlikely he would be killed. He's now effectively been locked up. Why not just go to court and get it over with? He basically imprisoned himself and may end up still having to serve time if he leaves. What's the point?

Re:It's stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point?

The point is that he can't be wrong. If he goes to Swedish court, gets fined (or even a couple years in jail) and doesn't "disappear", then that would suggest his panic was unjustified paranoia. Assange has built his life and social image on the assumption that the USA (among a long list) sees him as too dangerous to ignore, but that he's been outsmarting everyone. If he submits to authority (already a big no-no in his view) and they do not do anything beyond their obligations according to the law of the nation, that proves Assange a liar.

The most effective thing any government can do to diminish Assange's influence is to treat him like they would anyone else. His own hyperbole will do the rest.

Re:It's stupid

[HarrySquatter]

So his solution is to be annoying and to antagonize the people giving him sanctuary? Yeah, that sounds like a smart move...

Re:It's stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

He pissed his principles down the drain the minute he became partisan and started working for the Russia, that turned him from whistleblower to foreign agent.

As a foreign agent, trapped in a foreign country, he now needs to accept the consequences.

At this point, Assange is about the least unprincipled person out there. His whole "thing" was leaking against America because of it's human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan et. al. That was a reasonable thing to argue for, until he decided to become a puppet of Russia who is doing the EXACT same things in Syria that he was bitching about the US for in Iraq/Afghanistan. Furthermore, Russia routinely violates human rights, from murdering journalists, to beating people for being gay, to jailing opposition politicians, to carrying out nuclear and chemical assassinations on foreign soil.

If he had principles, he'd be leaking about that shit, because the US has largely withdrawn from the world stage under Trump exactly as Assange wanted, so the idea that it's the great evil spreading it's tentacles no longer applies, that title firmly now belongs to Russia, so why isn't he leaking about that other than the fact he takes money from the Russian state for his RT show and such?

Principled people don't take hush money to keep quiet about the causes they profess to care about.

Re:It's stupid

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, that was done by Saudi Arabia, not Sweden. Easy to confuse them, I know, one's a liberal democracy with no substantial record of abusing human rights, the other a theocratic dictatorship that chops the hands off people for stealing apples. I mean, they're almost the same when you put it like that, but no, they're not actually the same.

Re:It's stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and the "hunted" you speak of was them not looking for him at all, until he didn't turn up at court. No one was looking for him until after he was actually holed up there.

These fantasy squads people have hunting him down, making him mysteriously disappear between the UK and Sweden etc. are all hopelessly impotent because there was a gap of a couple of year where everyone knew where he was, not under any sort of protection and could have simply been seized by these bad actors.

Re:It's stupid

[Roger W Moore]

The point is to stand up for principles.

That's fine but Ecuador is not doing anything wrong here. If he wants to meet these people is he free to leave the embassy and meet them outside. Being a house guest does not mean you automatically get to invite whomever you want into the house as well. He should be grateful that Ecuador is sheltering him and frankly they deserve some sort of medal for sheltering this ungrateful git from what probably would be significant violation of his human rights.

No More Free WiFi

[Only Time Will Tell]

Ecuador can show him the exits to the embassy and how to use them if Mr. Assange believes his proverbial 'living in his parent's basement without free wifi' is tantamount to human rights violations. He's more than free to walk out the door and find out what real prison looks like.

Re:No More Free WiFi

[hey!]

You know, it's hard to say whether Ecuador has the legal right to expel Assange. Ecuador (like the United States), is a signatory to a number of treaties which govern the treatment of asylum seekers, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951).

These treaties establish a right of a foreign national to seek asylum in a signatory country if he genuinely faces persecution, and imposes duties upon signatory countries, such as various forms of non-discrimination and provision of administrative support. So while it is bad manners for Assange to be a political PITA to Ecuador, that's not legally sufficient grounds for expelling a refugee admitted under these treaties. Ecuador would have to find that Assange does not face persecution, except for conditions spelled out under Article 14 of the UDHR.

This puts Ecuador in a bind: unless something has substantively changed, it can't expel Assange without either (a) admitting that it violated the sovereignty of the UK by granting him bogus asylum in the first place or (b) apparently violating Assange's rights as a legitimate refugee under conventions that Ecuador is signatory to.

It's almost like...

[NecroPuppy]

He's trying to get thrown out.

If I were the ambassador there, my response to this would be contact the London Met police, say he's coming out in 30 minutes, and then have the two burliest members of staff toss his arse into the street.

There is, I suspect, a reason I'm not an ambassador.

Re:My oh my

[Theaetetus]

Glenn Greenwald has been one of the most ardent Assange supporters from the get-go. I wonder what he is going to have to say about this.

Assange used to be someone to admire but those days seem long over. It is one thing to have principles but had he just given himself up, gone to Sweden (likely), got tried for bad sex (less likely), convicted (even less likely) spent time in prison (totally unlikely) at the maximum sentence he would have been free and clear for over two years now.

Prone to bad decisions.

Yes, except characterizing penetration of an unconscious person after she had repeatedly told him no while awake as "bad sex" is more than a bit misleading.

This shall not stand

[PopeRatzo]

As a show of solidarity with Julian Assange, I will be suing my mother for violating my rights by insisting that I get a job and move out.