By Jeremy Sare, England.
In Britain’s colonial era there used to operate what was termed ‘Gunboat diplomacy’ which equated fairly closely to President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt’s maxim of, “wave a big stick.”
It would appear such archaic bullying tactics are still within the armoury of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in their “threat” to revoke the Ecuador’s London embassy’s sovereign status under the 1961 Vienna Convention. British authorities have been exploring every last legal option to arrest Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, who has been holed up their since June. Assange has already lost appeals in the British courts against extradition to Sweden to face police questioning (rather than charges) over alleged sexual assault.
But quite what the UK Government lawyers were thinking when they considered deploying the hardly known Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987 which would allow police officers to force entry into another country’s embassy, is hard to discern. The Act was drafted in response to the lawlessness and violence perpetrated within the Libyan People’s Bureau in 1984, culminating in the murder of police officer Yvonne Fletcher.
To equate Ecuador’s behaviour in assessing Assange’s legal case for asylum with Gaddafi’s hoodlums is, at least, stretching a point. Senior lawyer, Lord Carlisle, said such a move against diplomatic immunity would be, “Extremely inadvisable … we cannot set a precedent which could be replicated in other countries.”
In any event, there followed a predictably prickly response from Ecuadorian’s Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, who condemned the UK’s, “attack on Ecuador’s right to consider asylum … which threatened to plunge relations into the dark ages”.
It would appear Quito already had it in mind to grant asylum to Assange so such a provocative move by the British Government could only backfire. Extradition lawyer, Peter Binning, told Sky News the case for asylum was not legitimate as Assange was not charged with “a political crime”. But that appeared to be rather a one-eyed view. Ecuador granted asylum because it recognised Assange’s fear of political prosecution by a third state. The obvious inference why British authorities are being peculiarly studious about this particular case is the invisible hand of the Pentagon who would like to see Assange extradited to Sweden where diplomatically it would be easier to seek his removal to the U.S.
Any future application for extradition for a U.S. court hearing would need to be signed off by the UK as well as Sweden. According to Foreign Minister Patino, London, “showed no willingness to negotiate on that issue”. Neither would Swedish or U.S. diplomats be drawn on giving any view to the Ecuadorians on that point. As they already considered Assange’s fears as “legitimate” they were bound to offer him political asylum.
In the U.S. such is the institutional outrage and angry embarrassment at Wikileaks’ disclosure of thousands of classified U.S. defense and intelligence papers in 2010 that Assange would face a concerted legal effort to have him incarcerated for much of the remainder of his natural life. The unusually cruel treatment of his ‘accomplice’ Bradley Manning would be sufficient incentive for Assange to seek asylum any place he can get it. Manning’s lawyer claims he has been held in solitary in a cell 6ft by 8ft, compelled to stay awake for 17 hours a day and regularly forced to spend long periods naked.
However, British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, insisted, “It’s important to understand this is not about Mr. Assange’s activities at Wikileaks or the attitude of the U.S.”
Julian Assange’s ‘imprisonment’ in the comfortable surrounds of the Ecuatorian Embassy in London’s chic Knightsbridge will continue for the foreseeable future. The British are clear they will not allow “safe passage” for Assange to leave the country so he faces immediate arrest if he steps outside. Despite their sympathy with his plight, it would be most unlikely Ecuadorian diplomats would seek to smuggle him out through any of their channels. So for all the mass flurry of news cameras and chanting of protestors, Assange has actually neither moved an inch nearer extradition nor his freedom.
