Assange has ventured to test the onerous limits on his conduct that have been imposed by embassy protocols, taking the matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. His argument has been that the strict rules applied to his stay, entailing a monitoring of visits, control of medical bills, communications, expenses, and pet care were a violation of "fundamental rights and freedoms." The Commission, as it transpired, did not bite.
The Ecuadorean president, in pained tones, claimed that "photos of my bedroom, what I eat and how my wife and daughters and friends dance" had been doing the buzzing rounds on social media. While Moreno did not explicitly accuse Assange of being behind that spray of material, the accusing voice was unmistakable. Vice President Otto Sonnenholzner confirmed it, loudly proclaiming that what WikiLeaks had done was "repugnant." The Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Valencia, focused on Assange's means of communication, arguing that he had been biting the hand that had fed him.
The entire show of puffed indignation seemed an enormous distraction. Last week, the Ecuadorean National Assembly passed a resolution calling for a corruption probe into Moreno's affairs regarding the INA Papers. The INA Investment Corp of Panama fame specialises in minimising (dare one say evading?) tax, and it took a publication by digital news platform La Fuente on February 19 to suggest a link between Moreno, his family, and the company. From that particular haven, it is alleged, ample funds were used from an offshore account to make an assortment of payments covering gifts, furniture purchases, and an apartment in Spain.
While the increasingly crotchety approach from the Moreno government suggests an imminent decision on his fate, Assange has not been left without some legal ammunition. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in a ruling issued on May 30 last year, made it clear that Assange should not only be released but granted safe passage to Ecuador as part of the right to asylum. The advisory opinion considered the right to seek and receive asylum in a foreign country pursuant to the American Convention on Human Rights and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.
The protection against refoulement, in which a person's life, integrity, security and/or liberty might be at risk, was held to bind States extraterritorially "whenever authorities exercise their authority or effective control over such persons, as may happen in legations, and that, by their own nature, may be in the territory of another State with that State's consent and authorization." But Moreno and his colleagues are a desperate bunch, and their latest efforts suggest that scapegoating Assange and readying him for the fall might offer some measure of therapeutic relief, however brief.