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| Quito, via National Geographic. |
One thing I think everybody needs to note about the Assange story is that at this point it's not about the United States, not about Sweden, not about WikiLeaks—not driven by the preoccupations of these people we think about when we think about Julian Assange. It's really, at the moment, an Ecuador story.
That is: the previous president, hero of free speech Rafael Correa*, left his chosen successor, the less heroic Lenín Boltaire Moreno (yes, he's named after the Bolshevik leader, as well as Voltaire, only his parents spelled the latter wrong), with a problem in the country's London embassy in the form of Assange squatting there, failing to clean the bathroom or change the kitty litter, while avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted on rape charges, and from where he claimed he would be extradited to the US and buried like the Man in the Iron Mask. Moreno has been trying to get rid of this national embarrassment since he took office almost two years ago (one of the things that has enraged his former patron Correa), and he's finally succeeded, and that is the story, and it's not even all that interesting.
*Some Ecuadoreans have an alternative view on Correa's commitment to free speech:
Correa had a poor record on free speech at home. In 2011, he closed a string of radio and television stations in a bid to silence critics. According to Human Rights Watch, five journalists were jailed for “disrespecting” the government between 2008 and 2011.
