June 19 marks the one-year anniversary of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange living in exile at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Based on recent diplomatic talks, it doesn’t seem like Assange will be going elsewhere anytime soon.
In a meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said the embassy would continue to provide political asylum to Assange, and added that Assange is ready to stay inside the embassy for 5 years if necessary.
Assange has not left the Ecuadorian embassy in the last year. The British government has kept police officers outside the embassy 24 hours a day, seven days a week — armed with handcuffs, assault rifles and orders to deport Assange to Sweden if he emerges. This constant surveillance has cost the British government more than $4.7 million so far.
The Aussie native asked the South American nation last year to protect him from extradition to Sweden, where police want to question him on allegations of sexual assault.
Many human rights and freedom-of-information advocates are concerned that if Assange is extradited to Sweden, he will then likely be sent to the U.S., where he is wanted for disclosing confidential government information. They fear that if Assange is sent to the U.S., he will be sentenced to death.
Hague and Patino met for about 45 minutes in order to “keep channels of communication open” regarding Assange’s status, according to the British Foreign Office. The Foreign Office said the two ministers agreed to meet and “establish a working group to find a diplomatic solution to the issue of Julian Assange,” but “no substantive progress was made.”
Hague stressed that any compromise had to fall within the laws of the United Kingdom, according to the Foreign Office. The British government has said numerous times that it is legally obligated to extradite Assange and cannot allow him to leave the embassy and fly to Ecuador.
Patino responded, saying that the two nations were using different legal justifications to support their arguments.
“Ecuadorean government will continue to ensure that [Assange] continues with the protection we have given him under asylum in our country, protecting his life, his personal integrity, and particularly his freedom of expression,” he said, according to BBC News. “The Ecuadorean government maintains that the reasons for which Ecuador granted asylum are still relevant, and therefore there is going to be no change in his circumstances.”
Since Assange has been in the Ecuadorian embassy, he has remained active with his political work.
In the past year, Assange has written a book, released intelligence records from the 1970s and about 2.4 million emails related to Syria, and has weighed in on other whistleblower cases ranging from Pfc. Bradley Manning to the recent National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Assange has also worked on a WikiLeaks movie called “The Fifth Estate” and is running for the Senate in Australia under the WikiLeaks Party.
Some A-list visitors, including pop singer Lady Gaga and film director Oliver Stone, have stopped by the embassy to offer their support. Assange has also given interviews to some media organizations.
Why Ecuador?
According to reports from the BBC, Assange had been negotiating with Ecuadorian officials for months before the South American government announced it had granted him asylum. Still, when the announcement was made, many were puzzled why Ecuador had chosen to take such a large political risk.
“This is a complex case in which the reputations of many countries are at stake,” Michel Levi, a foreign policy analyst at Simon Bolivar Andina University in Quito, Ecuador, said in an interview with the BBC.
Reports indicate that since WikiLeaks first released classified U.S. State Department diplomatic cables in 2010, Ecuadorian officials have spoken out in support of Assange. Almost immediately after the release of the documents, then-deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said Ecuador would grant Assange residency if he needed it, but President Rafael Correa expressed some concerns.
Talking to various media, Correa said Lucas’ offer to Assange was not an official offer and said Assange “committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information.”
However, Correa changed his tune in April 2012 after discovering that the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador was critical of his administration. Correa praised the work of WikiLeaks during a 75-minute interview with Russia Today.
“She was a woman totally against our government,” Correa said of former U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Heather Hodges. “A woman of extreme right wing views that still lived in the Cold War of the 1960s.”
Correa said that based on information released by WikiLeaks, Hodges “wrote that her own Ecuadorian contacts told her that the chief of the national police was corrupt and that surely I had given him that post knowing he was corrupt so that I could control him.”
Correa has been criticized by the U.S. government in recent years after saying that the Americans have tried to push their own politics on the South American nation.
In his interview with Russia Today, Correa said that WikiLeaks should be praised for outing government secrets, adding that he does not fear leaks because he has “nothing to hide.”
People’s support
Though not all politicians applaud Assange’s efforts to inform the public, many human rights groups have praised his work. Eugene Craig nominated Assange for the nonprofit organization Global Exchange’s “People’s Choice Award,” which Assange eventually won.
The WikiLeaks founder “has done more to inform the world about U.S., British and NATO war crimes and propaganda in Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan and worldwide along with colluding governments in those war crimes than almost anyone else in nearly half a century,” Craig wrote. “He helps expose Wall Street/corporate malfeasance and criminal acts; deceitful, corrupt politicians; and the lying, corporate-controlled mass media,” Craig wrote. “ In the face of major disinformation campaigns against him and WikiLeaks, Julian has put uncomfortable truths above comfortable conformity and self-interest. For these reasons and many more, he is a true Human Rights hero.”
After meeting with Hague, Patino said that he updated Assange on the talks. Speaking to London24, Patino shared how Assange reacted to the lack of a resolution.
“I have just finished meeting with Julian Assange, who is in good spirits despite the limitations of his accommodation. I was able to say face to face to him, for the first time, that the government of Ecuador remains firmly committed to protecting his human rights and that we continue to seek cast iron assurances to avoid any onward extradition to a third state,” Patino said. “During the meeting we were able to speak about the increasing threats against the freedom of people to communicate and to know the truth, threats which come from certain states that have put all of humanity under suspicion.”
Though Assange has referred to his confined living conditions as “physically difficult,” he has publicly expressed his gratitude to the staff at the embassy and the Ecuadorian government.
“I remain immensely grateful to the support Ricardo, President (Rafael) Correa and the people of Ecuador have shown me over the last year,” Assange said, according to London24.