Assange said Wikileaks figures were advising Edward Snowden and assisting with his asylum application. He said that Snowden may have applied for asylum in other countries apart from Ecuador, and Wikileaks press spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said he had approached the Icelandic government with a formal request on Snowden’s behalf. He said the US was attempting to “bully” Russia and other nations from giving asylum to Snowden, but “every person has the right to seek and receive political asylum. Those rights are enshrined in UN agreements of which the US is a party. It is counterproductive and unacceptable for the Obama administration to try and interfere with those rights.” Assange was asked if Snowden had passed the secret documents he had shown to the Guardian to Wikileaks too and whether Wikileaks would publish such documents. Assange said: That is a sourcing matter so as a matter of policy I can’t speak about it. In relation to publishing such material of course Wikileaks is in the business of publishing documents suppressed by governments. He took issue with descriptions of Snowden as a traitor: Edward Snowden is not a traitor. He is not a spy. He is a whistleblower who has told the public an important truth … In law a traitor must adhere to US enemies and there is also a requirement that the conduct is in congressionally approved wartime - neither of these apply here. He added that “the Obama administration was not given a mandate to spy on the entire world, to breach the US constitution and laws of other nations in the manner it has”. He also warned that the US’s crackdown on journalistic sources under Barack Obama threatened “the complete destruction of national security journalism”. Michael Ratner, Wikileaks’s American attorney, said whistleblowers were protected under international conventions on refugees. The US had recognised that when it applied to Chinese and African whistleblowers, he said, “so it’s surprising to me now - though maybe not surprising in this particular case - to see the US ignore that”. “Asylum trumps extradition,” he said, and countries were not supposed to interfere with each other’s asylum processes. He said there was “no international arrest warrant that we know of” so Snowden was “not a fugitive in any sense of the word”. In a characteristic rhetorical flourish, Assange said that Obama had taken on “a generation” in this case – “a young generation of people who find the mass violation of privacy unacceptable. In taking on a generation the Obama administration can only lose."
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 17:57:25 +0000
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