There are more than one ways to skin a cat. Oprah Winfrey
once said she always wanted to be a star. Naturally she was drawn to Hollywood
but she didn’t like what stars had to do to achieve fame. Nobody does, but some
suck it up, believing they don’t have another option. Not Oprah. She chose
another route and got nicely rewarded for that bit of lateral thinking.
What about Edward Snowden? Did he reveal US surveillance
secrets for a noble cause? Was he a traitor to or a martyr for his country? He
has denied that he’s either and insisted he’s just an ordinary guy wanting to
protect ordinary Americans from their Big Brother nasty spying government.
Regardless of whether he’s succeeded in doing that or not and whether or not he
actually believes his own motives to be pure, he’s created a diplomatic
nightmare for the US, China and Russia and possibly even Eduador. More importantly,
the choices he’s made since the revelation show him as not being so
fundamentally noble after all.
In protecting Americans from having their privacy violated,
Snowden chose to seek asylum first in a country with horrific human rights and gargantuan
freedom of speech violations. Granted Hong Kong has autonomy but it answers to
the Chinese government, which Snowden has got to have known, given the work he
did.
China didn’t want him and he’s been neatly shuffled out of
Hong Kong. Under the pretext of the arrest warrant not being properly filled
out, which allegedly left the Hong Kong authorities no option but to let him
go. The US and Hong Kong are huffing and puffing at each other, but the reality
is, they’ve neatly averted a situation that would impede the trade relationship
they’re both trying to build. Ironically, they both cyber-spy on each other and
they both know they do. It’s unlikely China would want somebody like Snowden in
the country.
From China, it was onto Russia. Another country whose human
rights record is atrocious and where freedom of speech is severely curtailed. A
country whose leader supports Bashar Al-Assad. Nice work, Snowden.
They apparently don’t want him either. Putin has been
accused of taking pleasure in sticking his middle finger up at the US for even allowing
Snowden into the country without a passport, but he’s just stuck in a transit
lounge at the airport. That’s a pretty clear message from Putin. I doubt he has
feelings of affection for Snowden who has put him in a right spot. Obviously he
doesn’t want to wave that finger too close to the US nose, otherwise he would
have granted Snowden asylum. But officially ganging up against him would
discredit him with his voters.
He chose a pretty wise diplomatic option. A kind of halfway
measure that lets him off the hook in both directions. He’s no fool, Putin. So
it’s on to Ecuador for Snowden.
Which has defamations provisions in its criminal code that
allow the government to persecute its critics. In 2011 journalist Emilio Palacio wrote an opinion piece in El Universo in which he accused Ecuadorean President Correa of being a
dishonest dictator. Correa sued Palacio and three of the newspaper’s board
members, brothers Carlos Eduardo Pérez Barriga, César Enrique Pérez Barriga,
and Carlos Nicolás Pérez Barriga. They were jailed with 3 year sentences and
ordered to pay $40 million in fines altogether.
In an interview with The Guardian, where Snowden talked about his motives, he said "I don't
want to live in a society that does these sorts of things..." Really?
China, Russia and Ecuador don't do these sort of things?
Predictably, Jullian Assange and his lawyers and friends
were behind getting Snowden out of Hong Kong and attempting to get him asylum in
Ecuador. Whether it’ll work or not is debatable. Assange is still holed up in
the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he’s been for almost a year. He’s
obviously not that bothered about freedom of speech in Ecuador either.
You can’t tell much about a person from what they say. You
can’t even always tell who they are from what they do, especially in the
beginning, when the ramifications of their behaviour haven’t kicked in. But you
can tell a lot from the company they keep. That Assange and Snowden happily
accept help from countries with atrocious human rights and freedom of speech violations
makes a mockery of the cloak of nobility
they wear as whistle-blowers hell-bent on protecting everybody’s freedom.
