Tortured Solutions: Ecuador, the UK and Julian Assange’s Fate
The pulse of negotiations, a flurry of communications, and the person central to this is one who threatens to go nowhere – for the moment. But go somewhere these parties would wish Julian Assange to do. For six years, cramped within a space in London a stone’s throw away from Harrods, one he has made his tenuous home, a citadel of sporadic publishing and exposes; for six years, an unruly, disobedient tenant whose celebrity shine has lost its gloss for certain followers and those who did, at one point, tolerate him.
The landlords have lost patience, and Lenín Moreno is willing to call in the arrears. He has made it clear that, whilst Assange has been subjected to an unacceptable state of affairs (“Being five or six years in an embassy already violates his human rights”), he should also be moved on in some form with the British authorities. How that moving takes place is producing a host of large, ballooning questions.
Ultimately, the current Ecuadorean leadership finds little to merit Assange’s effort. He intrudes into the political affairs of other countries with audacity; he disturbs and interrupts the order of things with relish and, for those reasons, ought to be regarded with suspicion. “I don’t agree with what he does,” Moreno is on record as saying. “It is somewhat disgusting to see someone violating people’s right to communicate privately.”
Moreno, despite being classed as a protégé of his predecessor Rafael Correa, has done his level best to spruce up the country’s image for the United States whose Vice President, Mike Pence, duly acknowledged on a visit in June this year. He has moved on former figures within the previous administration, including Correa, claiming instances of corruption and crime. Previous contracts made with Chinese companies are also being scrutinised for their value.
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