If Snowden were an American ‘patriot,’ he’d have no place in Ecuador

Por: Roger Noriega

Fuente: InterAmerican Security Watch

The fugitive meta-leaker Edward Snowden may have fooled some portion of the American public into believing that he revealed intelligence collection secrets as a patriotic act to defend our civil liberties. However, the fact that he is evading US justice by hopscotching from one rogue capital to another tells us who he is and what he’s about. And his travel log also reminds us of the leftist authoritarians around the world – including a handful close to our own shores – who despise American values, muzzle their own people, and have contempt for the rule of law.

Yes, Cuba is still a Stalinist dictatorship, and a Castro is still running the place. Fidel turned over day-to-day management of the regime to his 82-year-old kid brother, Raúl, nearly seven years ago. In that time, a faithful cadre of American Cubanapologistas has caricatured him as a reformer. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. The man who has been the ruthless ideological watchdog of the Castro movement for nearly 60 years has launched an unrelenting assault on a new generation of dissidents, independent journalists, and human rights activists. Indeed, the Raúl Castro regime has even taken a US hostage – democratic aid worker Alan Gross – for daring to help the island’s Jewish community access social networking tools on the Internet.

Under the late caudillo Hugo Chávez, Venezuelans lost most of their democratic institutions, the rule of law, a representative Congress, independent courts, and transparent elections. The professional security forces have given way to revolutionary militias, narco-militares, and staggering crime. The last of the independent television stations was recently taken over by a chavista loyalist; several opposition newspapers continue to publish, but their message is overwhelmed by the oficialista media. After suspicious April 14 elections, Chávez’s handpicked successor Nicolás Maduro claimed, in his own words, a “Pyrrhic victory.” The ruling party rejected opposition demands for a full recount, and President Obama refused to acknowledge a chavista victory. In the mean time, the Cuban-backed regime is consolidating its power in the face of internecine strife within the party and economic chaos wrought by 14 years of wrong-headed economic policies and breath-taking corruption.

Ecuador’s foreign minister reports that Snowden has sought political asylum in that Andean nation. (Wikileaker Julian Assange has been holed up for a year in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he is avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning in several sexual assault cases.) Snowden’s hypocrisy reveals itself in his decision to seek the hospitality of one of the region’s most systematic violators of free expression. President Rafael Correa is known for persecuting independent journalists and publications. A new media law just passed by Correa’s congress (108-26), could “severely limit freedom of expression” by giving the government the tools to sanction and censor the press, according to Carlos Lauria of the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists. The law also creates new civil and criminal penalties that can be slapped on reporters. It also redistributes two-thirds of the radio spectrum to the state or to “grassroots” organizations – many of which toe the leftist government’s line.

Ecuador’s radically anti-American foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, compared Snowden’s bid for asylum with a case in which the United States refused to extradite Ecuadoran bankers who have been the object of a Correa witch hunt. What Patiño failed to note was that an independent US court has been weighing evidence in one such case for many years, concluding earlier this month that Ecuador’s attempt to seize the property of bankers is “inconsistent with US law and policy.” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John W. Thorton ruled that a law enacted by Correa’s government as part of its legal persecution of Roberto and William Isaias “represents a violation of … due process, judicial review, and independence of the judiciary to act with fairness and impartiality.” Ecuador has its way of doing things, these days, and we have ours.

US justice is not perfect. Sophisticated and secretive national security surveillance is contentious. Snowden is either a dissident or a criminal or a twisted misfit. All of these issues are being debated vigorously in the United States, with advocates on the right and the left taking unpredictable positions. One day soon, a Democratic Senate committee, Republican House investigation, or independent judge and jury may scrutinize Snowden’s actions, motives, and possible criminality. That is how we do things here. That is not how things are done in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China.

If Edward Snowden wants to vindicate his actions, he should return to the United States to state his case and face justice. An American “patriot” has no business hunkering down with authoritarians who despise his country and scorn its values.