In addition to a pair of personal statements from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that have surfaced in the last twenty-four hours, the man’s attempt to seek safe passage to a destination country willing to offer him safe passafe has become increasingly complex.
The “purpose” of the US government’s efforts are not to frighten me, says Edward Snowden, “but those who would come after me.” The first statement from Snowden, which read as an open letter to the global public, accused the president of the United States, Barack Obama, of betraying earlier assurances that he would not permit the diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over the whistleblower’s case after news reports indicated that the US Vice President Joe Biden had made a series of calls to countries where Snowden is believed to have sought asylum and urging them against accepting such applications.
“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile,” said Snowden in the statement. “These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”
And though it was reported on Monday that Russia was among the fifteen countries from which Snowden had applied for political asylum, the Guardian reports Tuesday that Snowden “withdrew the request” after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made it “clear that he would be welcome only if he stopped ‘his work aimed at bringing harm’ to the United States.”
And Ecuador, the country that was seemed to be doing the most to help Snowden in his international and diplomatic travails, took a giant step back from the controversy after its president, Rafeal Correa, said that the nation’s issuance of travel documents to Snowden by a lower-level diplomat before he left Hong Kong nearly two weeks ago was a “mistake”.
Though Correa said his country would still honor and review Snowden’s asylum request if he arrived in Ecuador or made his way to one of its foreign embassies, he said that Ecuador could do nothing to help him escape the Moscow airport where he remains.
“The right of asylum request is one thing but helping someone travel from one country to another – Ecuador has never done this,” said Correa.
The timing of Correa’s latest statements on the matter came just hours before a second communique from Snowden became available, this one a letter addressed to Correa from the whistleblower in which he thanked the Latin American leader for his support and his nation’s proven willingness to stand up to the United States when it came to human rights and free speech.
In the letter, written in Spanish but obtained and translated by the Press Association, Snowden says:
The decisive action of your consul in London, Fidel Narvaez, guaranteed my rights would be protected upon departing Hong Kong — I could never have risked travel without that. Now, as a result, and through the continued support of your government, I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest.
No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world. If any of those days ahead realise a contribution to the common good, the world will have the principles of Ecuador to thank.
Whether irony, poor timing, or a calculated gesture to improve his standing with Correa, the letter does little to solve Snowden’s immediate problem of finding a way to leave Russia while still avoiding the clutches of the US government.
According to WikiLeaks, Snowden has requested asylum from Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela.
It remains unclear, of course, how his travel situation will unfold or whether or not the Russians will continue to make the Sheremetyevo airport a refuge for homeless–and now stateless–whistleblowers.
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Republished with permission from:: Common Dreams