by
P.
T. Freeman
The
Nestmann Group, Ltd.
Recently
by P. T. Freeman: How
the USA Captures Whistleblowers and Other Political Enemies
For the last
month, I’ve been riveted by the developments surrounding the
case of Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old whistleblower who confirmed
that the U.S. National Security Agency is, in fact, spying on almost
everyone.
Currently,
Snowden appears to be trapped in the transit hall of Moscow’s
Sheremetyevo Airport. The news coverage of the Snowden affair jarred
my memory as I had a transit at Sheremetyevo a few years ago while
traveling between Havana, Cuba and Hanoi, Vietnam. When I was at
Sheremetyevo, the new terminal in which Snowden is likely holed
up had been completed, but not yet opened. My transits were in the
older terminal, built during the Brezhnev era. I stayed in the Aeroflot
business class lounge for the few hours that I was there on the
eastbound part of my journey. On the westbound part, I had an overnight
connection, so I got a visa from the Russian Embassy in Vientiane,
the capitol of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic on my Commonwealth
of Dominica passport.
Snowden is
trapped for the precise reason that I predicted in an earlier
blog entry: the U.S. Department of State has now revoked his
passport. Unfortunately for Snowden, he apparently doesn’t
have any other citizenship other than from the United States and
this is not eligible for a second passport.
Now that Snowden’s
passport has been revoked, his travel options have narrowed dramatically.
Since he apparently hasn’t gone through Russia’s Passport
& Visa Control, he remains in a sort of No Man’s Land that
while surrounded by the territory of the Russian Federation, isn’t
legally a part of it. As long as he remains there, Russia has no
legal authority to detain Snowden for possible extradition or expulsion
back to the United States.
In order for
Snowden to depart safely from the Sheremetyevo without a second
passport, he will need to procure some type of refugee travel document.
So-called “refugee passports” originated nearly 100 years
ago when World War I ended. They’re also called “1951
Convention travel documents” or “Geneva passports”
and are authorized under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees. They look like regular passport booklets with two diagonal
stripes in the upper left corner on the front cover.
According to
the 1951 convention, a refugee is: “A person who owing to a
well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable
or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection
of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside
the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such
events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return
to it.”
Could Snowden
be considered a refugee under the 1951 convention or a 1967 protocol
amending it? We’ll see how developments unfold in this saga.
Hopefully,
none of you reading this post will ever find yourself in the situation
Edward Snowden is now experiencing: traveling internationally on
a passport your country has revoked. But if you do, I hope that
you take a precaution Snowden never did: to obtain a second passport,
“just in case.” After all, the grounds under which your
country (and especially the United States) can revoke your passport
are surprisingly
broad.
I’ve often
stated that a second passport can actually save your life. In Snowden’s
case, this could literally be true. If he ever returns to the United
States, voluntarily or otherwise, he’ll likely face trial for
espionage, a crime punishable by death under U.S. law.
Reprinted
with permission from The
Nestmann Group, Ltd.
July
4, 2013
P.T.
Freeman is a friend, business partner, and former U.S. citizen who
now resides in the Caribbean.
Copyright
© 2013 Mark
Nestmann
Republished with permission from: Lew Rockwell