By Mike Head
27 July 2018
In another indication of the
grave danger facing WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry
has reportedly failed to reply to two letters from his legal team asking for
assurances about his fate.
Over the past week, credible
reports have been published that Assange could be evicted soon from Ecuador’s
London embassy. He was granted political asylum there in 2012 to protect him
from being extradited to the US to face espionage-related charges that could
lead to life imprisonment or the death penalty.
One of Assange’s lawyers,
Carlos Poveda, told the Sputnik news site on July 24: “We sent two
letters to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry 10 days ago and five days ago
respectively and expressed concern about the issue of refusal to grant asylum
[to Assange] and we have received no response.”
According to the lawyer, if
Ecuador revokes Assange’s asylum, the WikiLeaks founder should have an
opportunity to meet with government representatives and obtain information
about a possible extradition to a third country.
Ecuador’s apparent refusal to
affirm the fundamental right of asylum under international law is a further
warning that, as previously reported, the Ecuadorian government is engaged in
secretive discussions with the British and American governments on plans to
hand Assange over to them.
Poveda said Ecuador’s Foreign
Ministry also failed to reply to a request for Assange’s representatives to
meet with the country’s President Lenin Moreno, who has been in Britain this
week, ostensibly to address a global disability summit. “It seems that
[Ecuador] is not willing to do so,” Poveda told Sputnik.
Earlier this week, the
Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry denied that Moreno would discuss Assange’s fate
with British authorities. The denial came after a number of reports that Moreno
would, in fact, hold talks with British ministers to finalise an agreement to
remove Assange from the embassy.
If Assange leaves the embassy,
he will be arrested immediately by the British police, supposedly for breaching
bail six years ago when he sought asylum. Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt last
week gloated that Assange would get a “warm welcome” from the British police
and face “serious charges.”
Prime Minister Theresa May’s
government has refused to abandon the bail proceedings against Assange, even
though the Swedish authorities last year finally dropped the underlying
European arrest warrant against him for questioning about trumped-up sexual
assault allegations.
As the WSWS reported this
week, Assange would be imprisoned by the British authorities, perhaps for two
years or more, pending extradition to the US, where Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both stated their determination
to prosecute Assange and permanently silence him.
The WikiLeaks editor has
become the world’s foremost political prisoner. He has spent more than six
years effectively trapped and constantly monitored inside Ecuador’s embassy,
and been cut off all communications with the outside world, including his own
mother, since March 28.
Assange has not been charged
with a single crime. The only “serious charges” he could face are in the US. He
is being incarcerated because the ruling elite in Washington and its allies
fear the impact of his media organisation’s ongoing exposures of their mass
surveillance, anti-democratic machinations and war crimes.
Assange’s mother, Christine,
this week issued a call, through an interview with
the WSWS, for people to take a stand against the persecution of her son and the
wider threat to political freedom.
“We are working towards
becoming a totalitarian state, 1984 is here,” she warned. “If you don’t fight
it now then you will suffer under it. Julian is in the forefront of this—he’s
the number one target at the moment and he’s the one we have to stand up for. I
say this, not just as a mother, but as a citizen and someone who believes in
democracy and freedom. We have to fight because if they take him, they can take
anyone and they will take anyone. We have to do this en masse and in this way
we can hold back the forces of oppression.”
Christine Assange also warned
against any reliance on governments, the political establishment, the corporate
media and the ex-“left” and liberal layers who previously professed support for
the defence of her son but then lined up behind the forces seeking to silence
him and WikiLeaks.
“People have to de-lineate
between the genuine traditional left who stand up for the rights and living
standards of the common people, and the so-called liberal left or pseudo-left
who are only interested in their individual concerns and privileges,” she said.
Protests are being organised
around the world to respond if and when Assange is evicted from the London
embassy. Click
here for details. The WSWS endorses such demonstrations and urges its
readers to participate. Such action, however, will be just the beginning of a
protracted campaign to defend Assange and oppose the increasing censorship of
critical voices and independent media on the Internet.
Evidently nervous about
evicting Assange in blatant violation of international law, Ecuador’s Foreign
Minister Jose Valencia told Spain’s ABC newspaper on Thursday that
Ecuador “has been very clear” on Assange’s asylum status.
“It is an issue that should be
dealt with in the framework of international law by three parties: the British
government, the Ecuadorian government and Assange’s lawyers,” Valencia said. It
was “difficult to predict how long it will take to find a solution,” he said,
indicating that such discussions are indeed underway.
While publicly downplaying
reports of Assange being removed within days, Valencia reiterated his recent
declarations that asylum is not “eternal.” He also defended cutting off
Assange’s communications with the outside world, insisting it was not
censorship.
“Ecuador granted Assange
asylum on the basis of agreements providing him with protection by our
country,” Valencia stated. “These conventions determine that the person seeking
asylum cannot make political pronouncements or put the host country’s relationship
with third parties (in this case Spain) at risk.”
This is a pretext for
justifying throwing Assange to the wolves after he made a telling criticism of
the previous Spanish government’s authoritarian imprisonment and extradition
proceedings against ousted Catalan government leaders. The “third parties” no
doubt includes the US, with which Moreno’s government has been seeking a
rapprochement.
The moves against Assange are
possible only because the British Labour Party opposition headed by Jeremy
Corbyn has refused to oppose the May government’s threats, let alone demand
that Assange be given a guarantee against US extradition.
Equally responsible are the
Australian government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the country’s
Labor Party opposition, which have maintained their collaboration with the US
against Assange, an Australian citizen. This is in defiance of a globally
broadcast rally conducted
by the Socialist Equality Party of Australia, with the support of well-known
investigative journalist John Pilger, in Sydney’s Town Hall Square on June 17.
That rally demanded that the Australian government secure Assange’s right to
return to Australia, if he so wishes, with guarantees that he not be extradited
to the US.
Assange’s fate depends on
workers and young people everywhere demanding his immediate freedom, as a
central part of the fight to defend fundamental democratic rights, against all
the capitalist governments, pro-imperialist parties, trade unions and media
organisations that have lined up against him.
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