Dear Ambassador,
In view of the alarming news emanating from your estimable embassy, as a concered ‘world citizen’ I am writing to you.
It is an open secret that the United States contemptuously considers the sovereign states, the independent nations, of Latin America as its ‘backyard,’ and frequently exerts enormous pressure on Latin American countries to do its bidding, to the extent of effecting changes in the government by means both peaceful and violent. This arrogant superpower is now pressuring your small country to evict Mr. Julian Assange from your embassy and render this valourous warrior for truth and justice to the British – who are hand-in-glove with the Americans.
The government and people of Ecuador surely realize that when your country so courageously granted asylum to Mr. Assange, she served as a model for Latin America – nay, for 195 countries and 7.6 billion people. In granting asylum to Assange, Little Ecuador set an extraordinary example: for she not only protected the world’s pre-eminent cyber freedom-fighter, she stood up to a most terrifying tyranny that is neither subject to any checks and balances nor pays the slightest heed to the Rule of Law.
If, after setting the unique example that you have, you now buckle at the knees and bend at the waist before the United States and proceed to turn out Assange from his refuge, the counter-example that you would set would negate all the wonderful work that Ecuador has done so far in giving hope to those who are hunted and pursued for doing nothing more than exposing the truth about those whose power is as boundless as their morality is negligible. Even worse, such an odious development may be a mortal blow to the morale of good, honest, hard-working human beings whose only sin is to face up to the powerful and the corrupt.
If the rest of us cannot emulate such brave persons as Mr. Assange, then those like me ought to at least speak out for them and those like you – with all due respect – ought to afford them whatever protection that you can, in line with the principles that your country, under former President Mr. Rafael Correa, had previously enunciated.
May I respectfully request that my sentiments and reasoning – which would be echoed by millions of people the world over – be communicated to your new head of state, Mr. President Lenin Moreno, and his new Foreign Minister, Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa.
With gratitude for your consideration,
Yours Respectfully,
Kersasp D. Shekhdar
Cc. Media organizations