WikiLeaks breaking news on Twitter April 4, 2019 announced:
“A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within “hours to days” using the INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext–and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.”
In the morning of April 5, 2019, Ecuador Foreign Minister José Valencia tweeted (he later did withdraw it) in response to the above mentioned post by WikiLeaks:
“Diplomatic asylum is a sovereign privilege of a state, which has the right to grant it or withdraw it unilaterally when deemed necessary”
Ensuing, SWEDHR produced the following statement:
SWEDHR – Statement April 5, 2019
This is why Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia is logically and ethically wrong about the situation of Mr Assange in London:
1. It is not a “diplomatic” asylum; it is a political asylum.
2. The conditions of the asylum at the embassy, as changed by the Lenin Moreno administration –which has deprived Mr Assange of fundamental human rights and which are also worsening his health – have added to the political asylum of Mr Assange a huge humanitarian issue.
Both these human rights infringements on the person of Mr Assange and the violation, or threat of violation, of the political-asylum conventions prevalent in the Latin American countries, are matters for which the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador will sooner or later have to answer for to international Human Rights bodies.
One of these bodies, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), has requested the immediate freedom of Mr Assange.
This is the solution for which Mr Valencia should be working, while representing his country and its noble people – instead of working for the rendition of Mr Assange to the powers that are responsible for this protracted situation in the first place.
Professor, med dr, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman
Professor, med dr, Anders Romelsjö, vice-chairman
Swedish Professors & Doctors for Human Rights
