FIGHTING FOR JULIAN

The story of Julian Assange has become a real thriller of contemporary international politics. The founder of the website of revelations WikiLeaks, which specializes in the publication of classified information from various US agencies, including some of the documents on the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and materials exposing crimes at the US base in Guantanamo, is seen by many in the world as a hero of our time. And like the very time in which we live, this hero is just as complex and ambiguous not least because the personality of the Australian journalist, who challenged the bosses of the world, is still a kind of mystery.

The "unfortunate incident" is exhausted?

In the middle of June, Assange took refuge at the embassy of Ecuador in London and asked for political asylum in the Latin American country after a British court agreed to extradite him to Sweden. The Scandinavians accuse him of sexual crimes. Assange, however, denies his guilt, claiming that the case against him was fabricated. He fears that Sweden, like Britain, is in collusion with the US and will hand him over to American justice, which charges Assange with espionage and disclosure of classified information.

Authorities in Ecuador agreed to grant Assange political asylum in the end. Despite this, London made it clear that Quito's decision will not affect the fate of Assange. British representatives even threatened to deprive the embassy of Ecuador of its diplomatic status and storm the diplomatic mission of the Latin American country if it does not hand over the Australian to London.

However, soon such threats were substantially revised. And not only because the government of Ecuador warned: the storming of the embassy by the British police will be treated by Quito as a hostile move.

Pragmatic London is perfectly aware of the consequences of violence against a foreign embassy, which directly contradicts the Vienna convention on the immunity of diplomatic missions. One can imagine what consequences the British assault on the embassy would have around the world, especially in the so-called problem countries, many of which are not too fond of Britain and the entire West. Abandoning the plans to enter the territory of the Ecuadorian embassy by force, London, however, warned that it will not allow Assange to leave the embassy. Though British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed willingness to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict surrounding the case of the WikiLeaks founder, it still let it be known that Assange cannot leave the country.

However, London met with the firm position of Quito, expressed by Ecuador's President Rafael Correa - a left-wing politician who uses every opportunity to spite Washington and its main ally Britain. The Ecuadorian leader reminded the British of their position on one old case. "The UK's refusal to extradite Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain in 1998 does not allow it to demand the same against the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. Pinochet was not extradited for humanitarian reasons, although he had killed tens of thousands of Europeans and Latin Americans, while tens of thousands of people were tortured during his dictatorship," Correa said.

Ecuador went on a diplomatic offensive with the support of the Union of South American Nations. The communiqu? of the meeting of the foreign ministers of member countries of this organization "condemned the threat to use force in international relations" and urged "respect for the principles of international law concerning the sovereignty of Ecuador".

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez burst into special anger against Britain, promising a radical response if London "decides to violate the sovereignty of Ecuador". "We suggest that the British government think better of it, as the era when empires could do what they wanted is over," Chavez said.

However, after the British lowered the degree of opposition around the Assange case and, in fact, withdrew the threat to invade the embassy of Ecuador in London, which allowed Rafael Correa to call "this unfortunate incident exhausted", it became clear that the situation was still far from the final solution - exactly to the same extent to which the culprit of the international scandal, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, does not consider his mission to be complete.

Freedom of speech is in danger?

At a time when Britain and Ecuador almost severed diplomatic relations and the global political community and international public opinion were divided into supporters and opponents of Assange, the latter confirmed his intention to fight on for the full transparency of the "powers that be". Assange's new rostrum is the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"As long as WikiLeaks is threatened, freedom of speech is in danger," Assange said, directly urging United States President Barack Obama to stop the persecution of the website and its supporters, which was reminiscent of a "witch hunt". The founder of WikiLeaks noted the need for the swift release of one of his informants - US soldier Bradley Manning, who supplied the website with important diplomatic papers and correspondence of US officials and is now accused of harming national security.

"We should use this opportunity to formulate a choice that faces the United States government. Will it return to the values of the revolution, on which this state is based, and confirm them or will it fly into an abyss, dragging us all into a dangerous and despotic world where journalists are forced to remain silent for fear of persecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?" Assange concluded.

The unmasked-journalist made a strong bid to become almost the new face of the international leftist movement. This is evidenced by open support for Assange not only from hot-headed Latin American anti-imperialists in the spirit of Che Guevara, but also from respectable pro-Western left-wing circles of Europe. One of the leaders of the socialist movement of France, Jean-Luc Melenchon, who made himself known in the recent presidential elections in France, gave the founder of WikiLeaks an opportunity to address over the phone the supporters of the French Left Front who had gathered for a rally in Grenoble. Assange thanked the French people for the fact that "France played a pivotal role in the fate of WikiLeaks when the US launched a campaign to close our site". The matter is about pressure on the website after it published confidential US State Department cables in 2010, which resulted in a number of major US telecom operators refusing to service WikiLeaks. It was at this moment that one French service provider started to support the website. As for Melenchon, he urged Paris to show solidarity with Assange and Ecuador, which has given the founder of WikiLeaks asylum.

Will Assange become a symbol of the modern leftist movement? It is too early to make assumptions on that score. We can only assume that he has fully embarked on the path of confrontation with the so-called globalist circles, even if originally he was not left-wing at all and only used information supplied by various groups of the American "powers that be" who are settling scores with each other in the backrooms of the US government. However, most of the world has a considerable interest not only in the possible covert part of the story with Assange, whose political profile is still not clear, but in how the detective story about the Ecuadorian embassy spiriting him away will end.

Will there be "play fair"?

In this regard, we can remember a series of similar situations that give reason to assume that embassy odyssey of the WikiLeaks founder may take more than one year. For example, Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, an active figure in the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary in 1956, took refuge at the US embassy in Budapest after the invasion of Soviet troops. He lived there for 15 years and was then finally allowed to move to Rome.

In 1990, Lebanese General Michel Aoun hid at the French embassy in Beirut for 10 months. Extradition to France saved him from further stay in the diplomatic mission. And in 1996, the president of the African nation of Burundi, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, lived at the US embassy for 11 months. The last case of this kind gained popularity: in April of this year, the blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng took refuge at the US embassy in Beijing. However, he emigrated to the United States with his family in May.

As for Assange, it is obvious that he has no chance of leaving the embassy of Ecuador without hindrance. The British police will arrest the journalist as soon as he goes beyond the fence or gets out of the car that will take him to the airport (according to British law, the police cannot search a car with diplomatic plates).

It is also clear that the Ecuadorian government will not risk taking Assange out of the UK in some extraordinary ways. Quito made it clear that "Ecuador wants to play a fair game". According to President Rafael Correa, "we are now studying various legal strategies, but we would like to solve this issue through dialogue". However, the Ecuadorian authorities do not exclude the possibility of going to the UN court for a final solution to the legal dispute with the UK and Sweden, which will affect the further fate of Assange. In the meantime, the president of Ecuador said, the founder of WikiLeaks will be able to leave the embassy under the following terms: "If the UK government grants him safe passage from the country, if Assange refuses asylum or if Ecuador reverses its decision to give him asylum, which can only happen if the circumstances that influenced our decision change."

All of the alternatives indicated by Rafael Correa are still far from realization. And this means that the criminal story of Julian Assange is also far from ending. And it seems that it will be accompanied by a lot of other stories relating to the highest spheres of global politics.