BackSnowden’s curious journey
The more Snowden seeks sanctuary in Moscow, Managua, or Quito, the less heroic his struggle seems
Premium(The Guardian)
So Edward Snowden has now applied for asylum in Russia. After revealing to the world how the US has built an astonishingly intrusive surveillance programme which enables the government to track down anyone, Snowden has escaped.
To Russia: where writer Anna Politkovskaya, who was critical of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the Chechen conflict, was gunned down in 2006, a crime still unsolved. Russia, where some members of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk rock protest group which has challenged the church’s orthodoxy and championed gay rights, are in jail. Russia, where, under a new law, non-government organizations that receive foreign funding and whom the government deems political, are required to register as “foreign agents".
Snowden is seeking safety in a country which has shown only contempt for the values that he claims he upholds. Other countries where he hopes to move—Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua or Venezuela—are hardly any different in adhering to international norms, respecting dissent, tolerating oppositional views, or protecting press freedom. Bolivia has threatened to pull out of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because it did not like its orders; Ecuador has highly restrictive laws against media freedom; voter fraud and unlawful killings are common in Nicaragua; and in Venezuela, state reprisals and intimidation have forced many journalists and human rights activists to watch their words.
That’s the irony inherent in Snowden’s professed values and the places from where he has sought support.
This is not to suggest that whistleblowing is wrong. Daniel Ellsberg was right when he released in 1971 the internal government study, called the Pentagon Papers, which analysed how decisions were made regarding the Vietnam War. The New York Times, which won a famous court victory to publish the papers, did not reveal Ellsberg as the source. Ellsberg went into hiding, but about two weeks later surrendered to the law, saying: “I felt that as an American citizen…I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer all the consequences of this decision."
Ellsberg did face consequences—the Nixon White House tried to besmirch his reputation and there were plans to “incapacitate" him. The court dismissed charges against him after reports revealed how the administration had bungled its own investigations. But there is a crucial difference between Ellsberg’s conduct and Snowden’s. While both briefly went into hiding, Ellsberg did not leave the country; he turned himself in, and he was prepared to face the consequences of his actions.
In his famous essay, Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau wrote: “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." Deeply distrustful of the government, Thoreau argued that people should not let the state dictate their conscience, and they should not become agents of injustice.
The risk of tolerating repression is that it destroys the moral compass, or what the American writer Daniel Goldhagen chillingly called Hitler’s Willing Executioners, his book about ordinary Germans and their relationship with the Holocaust: Germans who were informing on their neighbours, or in other ways becoming complicit in the Nazi project. Standing up to injustice becomes an obligation.
But if you stand up, you get noticed, and arrested. Thoreau didn’t pay the poll tax because he didn’t want to prop up slavery, and went to prison in 1846. Unlike Thoreau, who spent a night in jail, or Ellsberg, who faced a trial, Snowden has avoided facing the US justice system. To be sure, Snowden’s revelations have made the world aware of the scope and scale of secret court proceedings and orders, whose existence too cannot be confirmed, and yet on the basis of which mass surveillance became possible. The surveillance state has enjoyed a luxuriant growth in the wake of 9/11, even if it mocks the values of the US constitution and severely undermines America’s moral appeal. Snowden may rightly fear that if he returns to America, he will simply disappear in a cell without a number, to use Jacobo Timerman’s phrase describing the Argentine junta.
But many American lawyers would fight his good fight for freedom, provided he returns to the US, making himself subject to US laws. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, like Thoreau before them, knowingly broke laws in order to change them, and in so doing, were willing to go to jail. In India, Mohandas Gandhi was tried under sedition laws, and he told the district and session judge C.N. Broomfield, that he must pronounce the harshest punishment. Sentencing Gandhi for six years, the judge said: “If the course of events in India should make it possible for government to reduce the period and release you, nobody would be better pleased than I."
The more Snowden seeks sanctuary in Moscow, Managua, or Quito, the less heroic his struggle seems.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com
To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi--
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
