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I returned to
the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that
the UK government has
indeed decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy
and seize Julian Assange.
This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach
of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original
parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice
which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is
the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.
The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are
expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or
qualification elsewhere in the treaty.
Article 22
1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable.
The agents of the receiving State may not enter
them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
Not even the
Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese
dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during
the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from
each other’s embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail
my attempts in the British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible
breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to
raids and harassment worldwide.
The
government’s calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a strong enough
power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another symptom of the “might is
right” principle in international relations, in the era of the neo-conservative
abandonment of the idea of the rule of international law.
The British Government bases its argument on
domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot
counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw
from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on
it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would
leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.
I hope to
have more information soon on the threats used by the US administration. William
Hague had been supporting the move against the concerted advice of his own
officials; Ken Clarke has been opposing the move against the advice of his. I
gather the decision to act has been
taken in Number 10.
There appears
to have been no input of any kind from the Liberal Democrats. That opens a
wider question – there appears to be no “liberal” impact now in any question of
coalition policy. It is amazing how government salaries and privileges and
ministerial limousines are worth far more than any belief to these people. I
cannot now conceive how I was a member of that party for over thirty years,
deluded into a genuine belief that they had principles.
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