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Graphic designed by Somerset Bean
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange was granted diplomatic asylum by Ecuador yesterday. In the hours preceding the announced decision, the British government issued a letter that contained a threat against the Ecuador embassy in London, where Assange has been holed-up for nearly two months. The government indicated it might be willing to invoke a law and revoke the diplomatic immunity of the embassy so it could enter the premise and arrest Assange.
The UK has denied that it made any sort of threat. But, today, the Organization of American States (OAS) met and voted on a resolution to convene the Foreign Ministers of all OAS member countries to respond to this threat in manner that defended the “inviolability” of diplomatic premises. The resolution passed over the objections of Canada and the United States.
Here are some developments in the diplomatic standoff or insights into the situation worth reading:
ALBA condemns the British government’s threat against the Ecuador embassy in London
The Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our Americas (ALBA) released a statement soundly rejecting threats by the United Kingdom “against the integrity of the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in London, and against the sovereign right of Ecuador to manage their asylum policy.” It condemned the willingness of the country to “violate the Vienna Convention on the Privileges and Immunities” and ignore “international obligations.” ALBA characterized it as another “belligerent stance in addition to the treatment of the UK government on the case of the Falkland Islands and shows their lack of concern of relations with Latin America and the Caribbean,” and indicated a “special meeting of foreign ministers” was to be held.
How much of a mistake was UK’s threat against Ecuador?
A former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, calls it a “big mistake.” He also laughs at the idea that UK did not threaten the country, as it has claimed: “If I tell you, ‘I’m not threatening you but I DO have a very large stick here,’ it’s a question of semantics.” A British former ambassador to Russia said they had “slightly overreached.” Any attempt to get Assange would likely violate a clear principle of international law.
Nikolas Kozloff wrote about the threat and said, “Merely hinting that it would resort to force and ‘go rogue’ in an effort to apprehend Assange, Britain has demonstrated its contempt for international law and diplomacy.” He described a prior example in history when an embassy’s diplomatic immunity was violated. Guatemala was “engulfed” in violence in the early 1980s and Indians entered the Spanish embassy. Security forces in Guatemala threw incendiary devices at the embassy and Molotov cocktails the Indians had carried inside went off killing the peasants. He does not suggest this would happen but wonders if it would consider some kind of force in order to get Assange to leave the embassy.
Ecuador embassy in London complains of police intimidation
From The Guardian, a “senior Ecuadorean diplomatic source” reported the police presence had “risen from two or three to around 50, with officers on the embassy’s fire escape and at every window.” The source described this as “‘an absolutely intimidating and unprecedented use of police’ designed to show the British government’s desire to ‘go in with a strong hand.’” But, the British Foreign Office is still willing to talk with Ecuador about their decision. The source reiterated to The Guardian: “Ecuador has been proposing that we would be prepared to accept an undertaking from the UK and Sweden that, once Julian Assange has faced the Swedish investigation, he will not be extradited to a third country: specifically the US. That might be a way out of it and Ecuador has always said it does not want to interfere with the Swedish judicial process.”
President of Ecuador’s office puts out press release celebrating history of helping refugees
Part of Ecuador’s decision included a short description of the country’s history of helping asylum seekers. The President of the Republic of Ecuador has now chosen to emphasize some more aspects of this history. For example, in the 1970s, when there was a conflict between the Dominican Republic and Brazil, Ecuador’s embassy in Santo Domingo helped citizens fleeing the conflict. When Papa Doc Duvalier ruled Haiti, Ecuador sought to help those seeking asylum. They even had to involve Brazil so they could get refugees out of the country. Granting asylum to Assange is part of upholding human rights and being more inclusive.
CNN has a “primer” on diplomatic asylum
One key part is worth attention because it includes content suggesting there is no right to diplomatic asylum. The article states, “The prevailing view that diplomatic asylum is not part of accepted international law was settled in a case between Peru and Colombia before the International Court of Justice in 1950.” It adds, “Victor de la Haya, a Peruvian, led an unsuccessful rebellion in Peru and was wanted by authorities there. He hid in the Colombian embassy in Lima and asked for, and received asylum from Colombia. Peru, however, refused to grant safe passage.” The court ruled unless treaties or agreements were in place between countries diplomatic asylum did not have to be recognized.
International Court of Justice is likely to hear case involving safe passage to Ecuador
Baltasar Garzon, former Spanish judge and member of Assange’s defense, believes the UK is “legally required to allow Assange to leave.” The UK, Garzon contends, has “diplomatic obligations of the refugee convention,” which it must follow. Otherwise, the case will go to the International Court of Justice.
Why did Ecuador grant asylum?
Various viewpoints: (1) China, because, according to Martin Hutchinson, “Ecuador’s oil exports, mineral exploration and loan funding are increasingly dominated” by the world power. This gives it cover to make such a decision. As much as US businesses might like to retaliate, “Of the $1.7 billion in Ecuadorean exports to the United States in 2011, $1.6 billion represented internationally traded oil. So Ecuador’s help for Assange brings little chance of significant economic retaliation from Washington.” (2) Renard Sexton of The Guardian argues the upcoming election in Ecuador is a key factor because Correa has redirected ”the nation’s focus from the presidential campaign to a riveting legal and diplomatic affair of international significance” and, since neither of those quite touch upon how this is Ecuador asserting its sovereignty (3) “The Geopolitics of Asylum” by Tom Hayden at The Nation.
Ecuador President Rafael Correa explains decision to grant asylum in radio interview
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said in a radio interview that he was not in agreement with everything that Assange has done but “does that mean he deserves the death penalty, life in prison, to be extradited to a third country. Please! Where is the proportionality between the crime and the punishment? Where is due process?” He also stated, “The main reason why Julian Assange was given diplomatic asylum was because his extradition to a third country was not guaranteed, in no way was it done to interrupt the investigations of Swedish justice over an alleged crime. In no way.”
State Department: US does not recognize “diplomatic asylum”
“The United States is not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law,” the State Department declared in a statement. “We believe this is a bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom and that the OAS has no role to play in this matter.” First off, no one should be able to say with a straight face this is a “bilateral issue” because Sweden wants to extradite him. The UK will make no negotiated decision without consulting Sweden. It will not pledge to Ecuador that it has received assurances from Sweden Assange will not be extradited to the US without meeting with Swedish officials first. So, the US should at least call it a trilateral issue.
And finally…
“Democracy Now!” had an excellent program this morning
Both Daniel Ellsberg, known for releasing the Pentagon Papers, and Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for WikiLeaks, appeared. Robinson discussed the unprecedented threat made by the UK against the Ecuador embassy and what it would mean if the embassy was actually raided. Ellsberg congratulated Ecuador on its decision to grant Assange asylum.
84 Comments
UK will turn Assange over to U.S. one way or another. Outcome is not in question. Might makes right & Ecuador & its weak brothers don’t have a chance.
JMO.
A most superb roundup, Kevin.
Thank you.
Going to be wading through the links, for a while …
DW
Thanks for all this great information. Doesn’t Wikileaks have more docs? I thought JA had some “insurance” in case “something” happens to him.
I don’t think they have any documents to release. However, this is interesting
“Let’s Help WikiLeaks Liberate the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiating Text”
This is written by the person who launched the petition that had notable people signed on in support of Assange’s asylum request, like Danny Glover, Michael Moore, Thomas Drake, Bill Maher, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, etc.
Stories I’ve seen on that differ, though I haven’t follow it closely. I’ve seen some aver that Assange shot his wad (heh) by releasing the key previously but don’t count on me for accurate into.
I’d like to know what the most important story was that Assange perpetrated. To my causal observation, the only ones that mattered are those that relate to Iraq, which made it impossible for Maliki to redo SOFA on account of his internal political purposes. Thus O really had to withdraw the troops instead of keeping them there in the HUGELY expensive bases U.S. built.
Otherwise wikileaks that I know about don’t amount to a shithill of beans from the POV of changing anything.
The position by ALBA–whose members are Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela–was predictable. The vote of the OAS to move forward with a foreign ministers meeting, however, is something new, leaving the el Norte nations completely alone. And the UNASUR meeting, which is a broader group of Latin American countries than ALBA, and includes a mutual defense pact, will be even more significant.
The UK has its back against the wall in this. Aside from the “special relationship” with the US, I wonder why.
And the US statement about diplomatic asylum is ludicrous in light of the US’s past use of political asylum–most notably in Hungary in 1956 in the case of Roman Cathoic Cardinal Mindzenty.
It does appear that State (Hillary Clinton) will take ownership of this issue for now, isolating it from the White House and the campaign. Of course, what you hear from the Republican side, which has been critical of everything President Obama has done in other areas, is crickets.
I think you are right about the US being patient until the Bradley Manning star-chamber is inked. I am beginning to think that this is an intelligence-military community vendetta against Assange and Manning and not specifically a White House vendetta. Which means that even if Obama is defeated in 2012, a Romney-Ryan government will double down. And if Obama wins and it isn’t resolved before January 2017, Julian Assange will still be a hunted man.
Only something on the order of a Sen. Frank Church-Committee-on-Steroids is likely to leave Assange and Manning with their freedoms. Even if Assange gains physical asylum in Ecuador and Manning is acquitted in his court martial and released from the military.
Ten years ago, you would be on the money. In the coming months, we will see just how much power the US has lost in the past decade. Helluva job, W.
And how much power UNASUR, the non-aligned movement, and other nations that will join in the anti-colonialist framing of this incident have gained.
Wow. There’s an international powerhouse if there ever was one.
A perverse return to the era of extra territoriality
Nuclear bomb the Melon Farmers: release the 9/11 Wikileaks and (for me) the Alien Wikileaks
Not gonna join you in this contretemps.
Agree that U.S. has lost intl hegemony. So did Israel decades ago. Observe that Israel is well on its way to taking over all of Jerusalem and West Bank.
U.S. may be on the decline, but takes a lot longer than many may think.
Re the US, the Iraq material, including “Collateral Murder”
Globally, the information about Ben Ali of Tunisia, which provided the background for the Tunisian revolution.
The frank cables by the US ambassador in Pakistan likely didn’t help US-Pakistani relations.
Kevin,
Your work continues to impress me as not only some of the best done in the history of firedoglake, but it is also in the realm of some of the finest under-pressure journalistic writing being done in the world. And – it gets better every week. Hope you keep getting better.
That being said, we need to find out soon what Mr. Bob Carr has to say about this:
I imagine the next questions session in the Aussie Parliament will be bordering on uncivil.
Mosquito bites, and nothing Pakis didn’t already know about.
The purpose of persecuting Assage is to prevent info from getting to U.S. public, the only existential threat to U.S. PTB. Wikileaks has been massively unsuccessful at influencing U.S. opinion against USG.
WRT Tunisian revolution, who the hell cares. Has that changed anything important?
Collateral murder video had its 15 minutes of fame.
I’m sure there’s a ‘Negotiating Text’ that could/should be liberated, since they’re about to host their 14th Round, Kevin…!
Btw, it would be nice to see some Occupy actions in Leesburg, Virginia — September 6-15, 2012…! Occupy San Diego did an admirable job during the last round…!
When was Bob Carr relevant to anything in the U.S. or anywhere else?
I don’t think that US strength has been tested recently. Afghanistan and Pakistan are not strong arguments–nor is Yemen or Bahrain and definitely not Syria. The US no longer scares Latin America by being the world’s sole superpower; that power was exposed in action as insufficient to accomplish US interests and conducive to Iranian interests.
Israel’s hegemony rested for many years on US guarantees to help it meet threats from neighboring nations; the last time that was tested was in the First Gulf War. But the neighborhood has changed; surrounding states no longer see a military solution to the liberation of Palestine as effective, even as Israel takes more and more Palestinian land.
But US control over Israel’s actions through threats of suspension of aid, which were effective thirty years ago, no longer are effective because the US President is constrained politically and often philosophically by the Israel lobby. Bibi has taken this opportunity to consolidate an apartheid state to no international outcry (even Russia and China). One wonders how long it will be until Israel begins expulsions and ethnic cleansing (or whether the part of the Israeli public that still believes in human rights will assert their power or at least their protest.)
You’re shittin’ me.
Doesn’t part of that time coincide with the Democratic National Convention? That puts people having to decide to go to Charlotte, Leesburg, or both.
This one — philosophically.
Why else would he function as Netayahu’s doormat.
Apparently, Australian diplomats like to privately pretend that one of their own citizens might be extradited to countries like the US. After publication of this report from The Age, which I covered, Carr maintains the US is not pursuing extradition.
I hadn’t noticed that “W” was president for almost 4 years now…
As I remember, we stopped hearing about the US as the world’s sole superpower sometime around 2005, if not before. That trend has not stopped.
Naive much?
You surebly don’t think that Australia gives a FF about anything but being USBFF.
From DC’s perspective the shithill of beans would still provoke embarrassment among allies and breed mistrust that DC can keep anything under wraps, important or not.
Also it seems odd a Pfc would have had his hands on those cables unsupervised (i.e., not under dual control). And it seems State grossly underclassified some of the stuff — I suppose that would include whatever related to the Iraqi negotiations which you mentioned.
So most of the damage would relate to process. Not just a rogue Pfc but the whole incompetent system. The potential there would scare the s*** out of any ally I think.
On another issue Kevin’s post includes something about the US not recognizing diplomatic asylum. But I wonder if “political asylum” is included in that. There was the Cardinal Mindszenty episode at the US Embassy in Budapest, which suggests some precedent for the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mindszenty
It may depend on parsing whose ox is about to get gored, no?
*heh* Crafty buggahs…! Divide and Conquer…!
It’s not just Ecuador — it’s virtually all of Latin America now that is lining up behind Ecuador. The Ecuadorean Embassy isn’t the only one the Brits will have to be watching.
Have you been following Kevin’s posts? And noted how this is stirring up anger in Latin America?
The US’ hegemony is fast fading.
Fuck this Bob Carr guy .The UK serves as our cell-block punk and in return we allow it to be a rehypothecation mill for global banksters .This is about US state terrorism being waged against an example of what happens when the empire is confronted .
There were documents and rumors of documents that were rumored to be embarrassing and combustable to many of the large banks, no?
And I can’t see how Sweden can agree on its own to not extraditing A to US custody. It would seem that the US would have to not request the extradition.
It’s very much like the Ruy Lopez chess opening with its three moves.
Don’t dispute what u type. DC embarrassment creates huge reservoirs of antipathy but doesn’t change anything.
Wow! All of Latin America.
As I typed earlier, a real powerhouse.
Not.
And let’s not forget that on the same day as President Obama was trying to sell to Brazil the US’s newest jet fighters, one of them crashed and burned in Libya.
If Tunisia, then Egypt. If Egypt, then Libya.
Specifically as to Egypt, I understood the release of US/Mubarak cables added fuel to their revolution, specifically as to oppression and torture.
Why are you responding to this commenter as if she isn’t simply drunk and picking a fight?
I would like to chime in that the Brits are turning the International Diplomatic Community’s long-standing traditions and practices on it’s rear…! This is blatant overeach that is going to have far-reaching consequences…! ‘Diplomatic Immunity’, be it; Embassies, Vehicles, and, Unimpeded Travel, is the bedrock of International Relations…! 8-(
One version of Egypt is that there used to be 30 generals in charge. Now there are 29.
I think that does not represent reality.
Just saying that it is too soon to form conclusions about what is going on.
Don’t know a thing about US-Sweden treaties, but I know that Sweden abolished the death penalty, and I think there are countries that will not extradite to a country that retains the death penalty. And espionage can be a capital offense.
but I did see that Sweden in 2001 sent 2 asylum seekers to Egypt for torture at u.s. “request.”
Also, now that Turkey is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Homer will have to extend Odysseus’s wandering beyond the traditional ten years.
Ian Welsh sums up the situation in 2 lines.
Sweden has been the US’s buttboy since Karl Rove consulted with one of the party’s leaders there who then let us ‘rendit’ a known terrorist to Egypt. It’s the Bad Scandinavia.
Also the US won’t extradite Kissinger, Rumsfeld, or others who have been found guilty in absentia of crimes against humanity.
Yes, I know about that: I read here at FDL, but don’t know how well-informed I am despite the wealth of excellent information since I drink dark wine after dinner.
*heh* Ye of little faith…!
Keep an eye on how hard the Mighty may fall…
Iran Preparing to Lead Global Nonaligned Group
…The Nonaligned Movement, founded during the height of the cold war, when the divisions were chiefly East-West, regards itself as independent from the major centers of power, which are not quite as neatly lined up as before.
During a weeklong conference, followed by a leadership summit meeting, Iran says it will unfold plans to revitalize the movement and seek support for its nuclear enrichment program and its resistance to what it calls dominance by the United States.
Representatives of all of the 118 member nations, among them China, India and Indonesia, will travel to Tehran for the conference, while invitations have been extended to observer states and international organizations, such as the Arab League, and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
One issue that no one seems to have picked up is that Argentina has serious restrictions on any UK vessels or airplanes that have the Falklands on their routes.
Couple the simmering hostility of Argentina, and its allies, have about the Falklands with a high handed abrogation of traditional Consular/embassy sovereignty would has the potential to create major trade, travel and political problems between S. American and the UK
Perhaps the British foreign office doesn’t care but maybe they should.
Well, Sweden had no problem handing over a couple guys to be rendered and tortured. Champion of human rights? Not so much.
I also learned about the Rove connection here, but I think the US government is not above misleading our Swedish allies about the eventual disposition of their prize.
The military claims to have taken the death penalty off the table for Bradley Manning as well. We’ll see.
Speaking of ‘Championing of Human Rights’, Hillary and Flynt Leverett let’s loose… How Washington’s Determination to Dominate Iran Corrodes U.S. Standing in the Middle East: Lessons from Bahrain…
…Bahrain is arguably the most flagrant manifestation of American hypocrisy regarding the Arab spring. As the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, noted in his Washington Post op ed on Syria last week, see here, “there have been conflicting responses to the civic movements sweeping the Arab world. A glaring example of these contradictions lies in Bahrain and the way some states have responded to the crackdown on the uprising there.” In his set up for the Inside Story episode, Al Jazeera’s moderator, Shihab Rattansi, notes that “for almost every single Arab country that has seen uprisings over the past two years, the U.S. has called for regime change—except for the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, one of its closest allies in the region.” Bahrain is, of course, the home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Three months ago, the United States resumed selling weapons to the Bahraini government, notwithstanding its extensive, ongoing, and well-documented violations of human rights and its failure to make any discernible progress toward meaningful political reform, much less a negotiated political settlement between the government and the opposition.
As Hillary points out, Washington cannot recalibrate its policy toward Bahrain without a fundamental reevaluation of its larger strategy in the Middle East. As a result of that strategy, she says, the United States is
“stuck with an ally like Bahrain, we’re stuck with some of the allies that we have in the Middle East. That’s because our strategic interest, as U.S. officials have framed it now for decades, is essentially oil and Israel. And oil is personified in the state of Saudi Arabia. So any country that is willing to align itself, to collude with Israel and Saudi Arabia, to give up their own sovereignty, to do whatever they do to their own citizens in order to work with Israel and Saudi Arabia in U.S. interests—those are our allies…Sometimes they’re better, sometimes they’re worse, sometimes they behave better, sometimes they don’t. But we’re stuck with them.”
*gah*
I watched Paths Of Glory (again) last night. I hate to read.
The same can be said about US-China relations, except instead of its being for the Fifth Fleet it’s for cheap consumer tchotchkehs or expensive gizmos like the one I’m typing on.
One of the all-time top ten B&W movies.
I don’t have a lot to offer here but it seems to me that if the OAS sticks together (and there is no guarantee of that), then it will tend to weaken US hegemony over the world. They appear to have justice on their side. Assange seems guilty of no more than revealing some dirty and embarassing secrets. If Britain raids the embassy and Assange gets extradited to the US there could be a price for that in world opinion and alignments. The BRICs could move further away from us. Kinda like ” you feel lucky?”
I think a list of all-time top ten B&W movies would outrank a list of all-time top ten color movies.
As long as Casablanca tops the list…!
It could be tops on both lists unless colorized versions are banned, as they should be. They Turnered Ilse’s teeth blue fer cryin out loud!
Interesting tidbit. Looks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization plus. Ecuador is a major Chinese trading partner; as long as China keeps the relationship to trade and doesn’t dictate internal policy, it is square with the Monroe Doctrine (sorry, Uncle Sugar). I don’t for a minute think that Iran is anything but the current convening president for a term. It’s the other players who will have the clout.
This becomes bad news if it leads to a breakout from the nonproliferation treaty. Of course, ten plus years of US unilateralism and repudiation of previously signed international agreements has set the table for this breakout. The US and Russia need to move quickly on nuclear arms reductions to the level that they can include China, India, Pakistan in the talks. And the US needs to lean on Israel to come clean relative to the NPT if nonproliferation is to remain part of the international agenda. I am not optimistic at this point. US hubris is going to hurt US interests again.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Yemen comes in a close second.
And then there are Jordan and Morocco, in which there has been limited co-option of the movement but not serious reform.
Hmmm… The plot thickens… Russia issues warning to Britain over Assange…!
That’s cheeky.
No doubt dictated by Putin as he was ogling the images from the new closed circuit video cameras he’s had installed behind the mirrors in the cells of Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
Rank Hypocrisy knows no boundaries, ET…!
Might that be Barbados? I think barbuda is Spanish for beard.
US hubris is going to hurt US interests again.
This go-around is gonna be fugly…! 8-(
And the cameras in their toilets, the perv.
How could I have forgotten the toilets today, Teddy….
eCAHN, i understand your skepticism about the MENA but South America deserves some respect for standing up to US hegemony. I think the turning point was when the people of Venezuela in 2002 resisted and reversed the coup returning Chavez to power. This was the first time a US supported coup was thwarted and is a historical milestone.
With Brazil becoming an economic power, Venezuela controlling the worlds largest oil reserve and Bolivia controlling huge lithium resources South America is not a Paper Tiger.
They may not be military powers but some of them have successfully kicked out the CIA, DEA, World Bank, IMF, US Military, US corporations and other foreign influences while maintaining their sovereignty.
They should at least get a little respect for doing what we wish we could do here in Amerika.
They threaten more than you’d at first believe. A few selected blind trusts leaked would make much difference.
Brazil has an advanced aircraft building industry. Can’t understand why they would feel the need to buy Yankee jets…..
Bush/Cheney run WH to Obama run WH proved to be seamless. Hard to tell the difference much of the time. In fact I recall reading not too long ago that Barack Obama was not going to be mentioning G.W.Bush during 2012 WH election. Evidently Barack Obama now thinks G.W. did one heckufa job.
As for the Obots/Dbots pulling W forward to cover 2009-2012 when it fits into the bots R vs. D politics is easypleasy to do.
Just like the turd in the pool gag made famous in the movie “Caddy Shack” this R vs. D junk is one of those “gotta-dos “. So check to make sure your Gotta-Do R vs. D Junk detector is turned on and set at right level…:-)
Or one can just employ America’s favorite 1980′s POTUS big hit repartee — ” there you go again ” …
Whatever.
I haven’t yet seen an account that makes it clear: what genius was it again that thought cops on fire escapes was just the ticket?
The OAS is pretty much irrelevant to most of the Americas… CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) was founded to specifically exclude the U.S. and Canada, whose interests are generally at odds with the rest of us in the hemisphere. At least among the Latin American nations, there’s a long tradition of taking in the neighbor’s obnoxious citizens (and expecting they’ll take in yours), and political asylum is of importance in all of these nations.
The two plausibly pro-U.S. CELAC member states (Mexico and Colombia) are both justly proud of their own traditions upholding diplomatic immunity and the rights of asylum. The Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques Saldivar famously stretched the definition of diplomatic immunity and successfully defended diplomatic immunity at the risk of his own life in Vichy France to save tens of thousands from the concentration camps, and Colombians no doubt to point to similarly heroic diplomats.
Just because OAS might be unable to do anything, don’t discount a joint diplomatic scrum involving not just Ecuador’s most sympathetic neighbors (Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil), but the whole hemisphere jumping in to fight the bullies on the block… or, is it “in the bloc”.
Is Britain saying that other nations may storm it’s embassies? Diplomatic immunity and safe passage and respect for international law are essential if the world is to remain ‘civilized’.
Or call it a MOTU issue. Lol.
Growing up I often heard of Cubans (and others) getting “political asylum” in the USA. Is diplomatic asylum same as — or different from — political asylum?
If they are the same, then I imagine there may be some people who have received political asylum who may be interested in this case. Immediately coming to mind is Marco Rubio. Ignoring the R/D stuff, didn’t he say that his parents ran away from Cuba? How about other well-known people? Other elected pols? There’s almost certainly some important baseball players who fled Cuba… perhaps Venezuela… and other places, such as the Soviet Union…
From Wiki on US asylum:
Sounds to me as though the US should be trying to grant him political asylum. Whoops! Silly me… the oligarchs want him dead. I guess they’re concerned that if they grant him “asylum” then execute him, We the People might raise a concern. We know they don’t care about the Rule of Law. But at least they still pretend as though it matters.
Isn’t the answer here obvious?
Putin should offer a Pussy Riot for Assange prisoner exchange.
And here I was wondering the very same thing…
My understanding is that the difference between political asylum and diplomatic asylum is primarily location. If the seeker is being sheltered by a diplomatic outpost inside a host country rather than on the soil of the country to which the seeker applied, it is diplomatic asylum. If anyone has a better definition, please post it. I’ve been trying it figure out the difference and the answer isn’t easily found on teh google.
A misunderestimation of Latin America, as I wrote the other day. And a silver platter opportunity for Latin America to demonstrate its rising strength.
The rising police presence likely indicates that Britain will invade the Ecuadoran embassy, much as Bloomberg’s mounting police presence showed that his final goal was to clear Zucotti park. Once the PTB are on a course like this, they are unwilling (or maybe so inflexible that they are incapable) of backing down.
To have diplomatic immunity you need to be a diplomat who is not a citizen of the country they are in, or be a member of the immediate family of said diplomat. Reference to politics refers to a vast majority od circumstances not just government politics. Any person fearing retribution from influential persons in their own country can walk into any Embassy in their contrary and ask for political assalym, which simply means seeking protection from a perceived political outrage or unlawful assault. The Ecuador decision to protect Julian Assage is 100% correct under the terms of the United Nations agreements to protect assalym seekers. Britain knows that. The United States of America knows that. Australia knows that.
Diplomatic immunity means the diplomat is not able to be held accountable under the laws of the country in which they have diplomatic immunity, all the laws. The internationally agreed idea is to stop events of persecution of diplomats in foreign countries. Who whould have thought a diplomat needed protection from persecution in England, but clearly they do.
Australian citizen Julian Assage should have been able to walk into the Australian Embassy in Britain on the basis of his Australian citizenship and received protection from Australian Embassy officials against the Swedish extradition which appears to contain a significant element of third party persecution on behalf of the United States. That our Australia government has remained like a coward in the shadows and refuses to stand up for one of its citizens is evidence that intangible Australian government politics with Australian government allies is by far more important than the flesh and blood of Australian citizens. That’s no democracy.