Development: Over the weekend of 17-19 August the Ecuadorean government received the support of several regional organisations for its decision to grant political asylum to Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks.
Significance: Ecuador’s decision to grant Assange’s request, and its denunciation of the United Kingdom (UK)’s threat to enter its embassy in London in order to arrest Assange for extradition to Sweden, triggered the worst bilateral diplomatic crisis in recent history.
It also prompted emergency meetings of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba) and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).
The US is present in only one of these regional forums, the OAS, where it was roundly defeated on Friday (24 August) when a majority of countries voted in favour of holding an emergency meeting of foreign ministers to agree a common position in response to the threat made by the UK government
Key points:
• Ahead of the OAS meeting, the US State Department insisted that the OAS had “no role” to play in a “bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.” It added that given that the US is not party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, the US therefore “does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law” (under that particular convention).
• The OAS resolution was adopted with 23 votes in favour, three against (the US, Canada and Trinidad & Tobago) and five abstentions – three member states were absent.
• “What is being proposed is that the Foreign Ministers of our organization address this subject and not the subject of asylum nor whether it should be granted to Mr. Julian Assange. That will be discussed between Great Britain and Ecuador, the issue that concerns us is the inviolability of diplomatic missions of all members of this organization, something that is of interest to all of us", stated José Miguel Insulza, the OAS secretary general.
• In London, Assange addressed his supporters from the window of the Ecuadorean embassy on 19 August, calling on US President Barack Obama “to renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks,”….. The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters,” he said.
• The Alba issued an eight-point statement warning the UK of the “serious consequences that would be unleashed on the entire world” if its security forces entered the Ecuadorean embassy.
• Unasur issued a statement calling for “direct negotiations” between the UK and Ecuador and reiterating its commitment to the inviolability of diplomatic representations.
