Greenleft.org presents other side of free speech issue in Ecuador

Greenleft.org reported thta when Ecuador granted asylum to Assange in mid-2012, Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher accused Assange of “hypocrisy” for accepting asylum from President Rafael Correa, “one of the world’s leading oppressors of free speech”. Annabel Crabb joined in, writing in the SMH: “A gazillion Assange Twitter fans [hailed] Ecuador and its president, Rafael Correa, as a hero of international free speech and human rights.
“Correa is the same guy who last year jailed a journalist and three executives from the newspaper El Universal [sic] for saying nasty things about him …[and] is expected to soon extradite the Belorussian anti-corruption campaigner Alexander Barankov to a messy fate in his country of birth … Ecuador: champion of free speech. The mind boggles.” The only factual errors in Crabb’s rant are that Barankov was never extradited (but granted asylum), the journalist and executives mentioned were never jailed and the newspaper is not called El Universal!- See more at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54573#sthash.HAINyL7C.dpuf Read Article