[GPSCC-chat] Ambassador Craig Murray on Assange

[Brian Good]

Ambassador Craig Murray (former British ambassador to Uzbekistan), blogs (red bold mine):
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/08/americas-vassal-acts-decisively-and-illegally/

America’s Vassal Acts Decisively and Illegally

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.

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.
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20120816/34afa877/attachment.html>