One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
Edward Snowden
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Monday 1st July 2013
JimSofty / July 2, 2013
Edward Snowden should ask political Asylum and should live in the Moscow Airport or in the Equadorean embassy, if there is one, in Moscow.
That is how Julian Asange does.
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NAK / July 2, 2013
Us is an ugly bully and it has been so for some decades now. It’s facade of protector of human rights and democracy are just that a facade.
The dirty things(Assasinations,bombing of innocents,toppling of governments,helping their cronies to eliminate their opponents nad the list goes on)it has done through out its short two hundred year history will be more than rest of the countries put together.
The US is a cursed country by its native people and that curse seems to be spilling over to the world out side.
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JimSofty / July 3, 2013
I think, Snowden is screwing up himself. he can not be a patriot and a traitor at the same time.
He is trying to be a patriot when he is accused as a Traitor.
He can not have both. either this way or that.
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ONE / July 4, 2013
Down with Obumer and his 80% Zionist Jewish administration.
It’s your birth right to have your passport and not any president’s right to revoke it- that’s not what the few who vote, vote for. President elect is not for life morons for him or the Chief Justice to use the mother of all weapons on a weak citizen compared to the power he is enjoying.
The president or his administration doesn’t have the balls to clarify it with a referendum.
Where are the Wall Street protesters? Gone missing for ever?
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