Coca leaf growers from the traditional region of Yungas, in northwest Bolivia, surround the legislature in the city of La Paz, demanding an expansion of the legal cultivation area by the new law. Credit: Franz Chávez.

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Mar 9 2017 (IPS)

A new bill in Bolivia, which will allow the amount of land allocated to producing coca to be increased from 12,000 to 22,000 hectares, modifying a nearly three-decade coca production policy, has led to warnings from independent voices and the opposition that the measure could fuel drug trafficking.

Since 1988, the amount of land authorised for growing coca has been 12,000 hectares, according to Law 1,008 of the Regulation of Coca and Controlled Substances, which is line with the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

This United Nations Convention pointed the way to a phasing-out of the traditional practice among indigenous peoples in the Andean region of chewing coca leaves, which was encouraged during the Spanish colonial period, when the native population depended heavily on coca leaves for energy as they were forced to extract minerals from deep mine pits.

But the traditional use of coca leaves instead grew in Bolivia. According to the president of the lower house of Congress, Gabriela Montaño, some 3.3 million of the country’s 11 million people currently use coca in traditional fashion.

Citing these figures, lawmakers passed the new General Law on Coca on Feb. 24. The bill is now awaiting President Evo Morales’ signature.“This law is making available to the drug trafficking trade more than 11,000 metric tons of coca leaves per year, the average yield from the 8,000 hectares which the law grants to producers.” – Public letter signed by local intellectuals.

Morales originally rose to prominence as the leader of the seven unions of coca leaf growers in the central region of Chapare, in the department of Cochabamba, fighting against several conservative governments that wanted to eradicate coca cultivation, in accordance with Law 1,008 and the U.N. Convention.

The law had enabled the anti-drug forces, financed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to wage an all-out war against coca cultivation. The struggle against the law catapulted Morales as a popular figure and later as a politician and the country’s first indigenous president, in January 2006.

Montaño estimates that annual production amounts to 30,900 metric tons, 24,785 of which are used for medicinal purposes, in infusions or rituals, she said.

The remaining 6,115 tons are processed into products, or used for research and export, she said.

Assessing compliance with the 1961 Convention, medical doctor and researcher Franklin Alcaraz told IPS that in South America, only Ecuador has managed to eradicate the practice of chewing coca leaves.

On Feb. 28, some fifty intellectuals signed a public letter titled: “Public Rejection of the General Law on Coca”, which stated that “this law is making available to the drug trafficking trade more than 11,000 metric tons of coca leaves per year, the average yield from the 8,000 hectares which the law grants to producers.”

Bolivia was one of the 73 signatory countries to the 1961 Convention where clause “e” of article 49 declared that the practice of chewing coca leaves would be banned within 25 years of the (1964) implementation of the accord.

In January 2013, Bolivia recovered the right to practice traditional coca chewing, when it won a special exemption to the 1961 Convention. Its request was only voted against by 15 of the 183 members of the U.N., including Germany, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Wives of coca leaf farmers from Yungas during a vigil at the gates of the La Paz police station, where dozens of leaders were taken, accused of inciting disturbance during the demonstrations held to demand an expansion of the legal cultivation area in their region in northwest Bolivia. Credit: Franz Chávez.

In a January 2014 communique, the representative of the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonino De Leo, stated that the exemption “only applies to the national territory.”

The new bill repeals the first 31 articles of the 1988 law and legalises 22,000 hectares for cultivation – 10,000 more than before.

In practice, the new legal growing area is just slightly larger than the 20,200 hectares of coca which UNODC counted in 2015, according to its July 2016 report on the country.

President Morales has defended the increase in the legal cultivation area and reiterated his interest in carrying out an old project for the industrialisation of coca leaves.

On Feb. 28, Morales expressed his support for the new bill and accused conservative governments of supporting the demonisation and criminalisation of coca leaf chewing at an international level.

Montaño said that in 2006, when Morales first took office, 17,000 hectares of coca were grown in the Chapare region. Ten years later, UNODC registered only 6,000 hectares devoted to coca production.

She said that under Morales, the reduction of coca crops has been negotiated and without violence, in contrast to the repression by conservative governments that generated “blood and mourning”.

Before Congress passed the law, coca producers from the semitropical region of Yungas, in the department of La Paz, held violent protests in the capital.

Between Feb. 17 and Feb. 23, hundreds of demonstrators surrounded Murillo square in La Paz, where the main buildings of the executive and legislative branches are located, demanding 300 additional hectares, on top of the 14,000 presently dedicated to coca in Yungas.

There are an estimated 33,000 coca farmers in Yungas, and 45,000 in Chapare.

In the midst of clashes with the police, destruction of public property and the arrest of at least 143 organisers, talks were held with the government, which ended up giving in to the demands.

The settlement also granted growers in the Chapare region an additional 1,700 hectares, on top of the 6,000 currently registered and monitored by UNODC.

Political analyst Julio Aliaga told IPS that traditional use of coca leaves only requires 6,000 hectares, rather than the 22,000 hectares that the government of the leftist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is about to legalise.

This figure of 6,000 hectares is drawn from a European Union study on demand for coca leaves in Bolivia for infusions, chewing or in rituals. This study was not mentioned by the authorities or MAS legislators.

“Bolivia has a large surplus of coca which goes toward drug trafficking. The cocaine ends up in Africa, Europe and Russia, and the new colossal market of China,” Aliaga said.

Samuel Doria Medina, the leader of the opposition centre-left National Unity (UN), questioned the 80 per cent expansion of the lawful cultivation area and told IPS that the measure is “a clear sign of an interest in increasing the production of narcotic drugs.“

“The new policy will be indefensible before multilateral drug control agencies,“ since the UNODC certified that “94 per cent of the coca production from Chapare goes toward the production of cocaine,” he said.

In his opinion, the new law provides an incentive for the drug trafficking mafias to sell drugs in Bolivia, “with the well-known violence that this business entails.”

A satellite promotion in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that reads, "Space is Ours". Credit: Gustav Cappaert/IPS

By Gustav Cappaert and Chris Lewis
EL PALOMAR, Bolivia, Jun 23 2014 (IPS)

Maria Eugenia Calle, a local official in this Andean agricultural community, recently saw the Internet for the first time.

Her hometown of El Palomar will host one of about 1,500 telecommunications centres that the Bolivian government plans to open this year in rural areas. They will be served by Tupac Katari 1, a Bolivian satellite launched from China late last year.

Socialist President Evo Morales claims that the satellite will make Internet, cell phone service, distance education programmes and over 100 television channels available to everyone in this vast, sparsely populated country.Because Bolivia is landlocked, undersea fibre optic cables do not reach the country, so Bolivians settle for some of the lowest speeds and most expensive connections in the world. Hopes for the satellite are high.

In El Palomar’s yet-to-be-opened telecom centre, Calle and a small group of onlookers watched as a reporter booted up a computer to test the signal.

“Go to the United States. Show us the White House. Search for Toyota. Search for Real Madrid,” they suggested.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, and also among the least connected. Only 7.4 percent of inhabitants have access to the Internet at home, by far the fewest on the continent. Because Bolivia is landlocked, undersea fibre optic cables do not reach the country, so Bolivians settle for some of the lowest speeds and most expensive connections in the world. Hopes for the satellite are high.

“It’s a dream, isn’t it?” said Calle, 40, El Palomar’s secretary of education. “I’m happy that my children are going to be able to communicate with the United States, other countries – or here in Bolivia, with La Paz, Cochabamba,” she said.

With a population of just 10 million and a modest national budget, Bolivia is a strange fit among the 45 nations with their own communications satellite, which are typically either wealthy, heavily populated, or both. However, an increasing number of developing nations are making the investment. In the next two years, Angola, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka will launch their own satellites.

Rural areas bring special challenges for Internet expansion. The cost of installing and maintaining equipment and training people to use new technology is higher farther from cities, said Francisco Proenza, an ICT scholar and visiting professor of Political Science at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

While the use of mobile phones has increased dramatically, the Internet has lagged behind. In rural Peru, for example, 62 percent of rural households own a mobile phone, while just 7 percent of those living in rural areas make use of the Internet

After a 2009 revision, Bolivia’s constitution guaranteed access to basic services including water, electricity, and telecommunications. In addition to the satellite, the Bolivian government has opened over 300 rural telecentres and offered incentives to telecommunications companies willing to build infrastructure in rural zones.

According to Ivan Zambrana, director of the Bolivian Space Agency, a national satellite is the most cost-effective way of providing access across Bolivia’s diverse rural terrain, which includes mountains, tropical rainforest and desert. It is also a means of protecting Bolivia’s communication infrastructure from political factors that could restrict access, like the United States’ embargo against ally Cuba.

Bolivia’s Ministry of Communications has marketed the satellite aggressively. The agency created a television advertisement, a Facebook and Twitter campaign, and an Android app to promote the project. In the months surrounding the satellite’s launch, billboards reading “Tupac Katari, Your Star” and “Communications Decolonized” were placed in major urban areas throughout the country.

“When we think of Bolivia, we don’t think of technology, we think of rural poverty, but Bolivia has changed,” said Robert Albro, an anthropologist at the American University in Washington who focuses on Bolivia.

Despite the fanfare, sceptics of the satellite argue that Bolivia’s priorities are misplaced, especially with alternatives available.

El Palomar, a rural town a few hours from La Paz, Bolivia. Credit: Chris Lewis/IPS

Many other countries, including neighbouring Peru, have extended access to rural areas by subsidising the use of existing satellites. Google and Facebook are each considering a fleet of low-flying drones that would provide worldwide Internet connectivity. Until now, Bolivia has spent 10 million dollars annually to lease satellite capacity from foreign providers.

To finance Tupac Katari, Bolivia took out a 300 million dollar loan from the Chinese Development Bank, which the government claims will be repaid by satellite revenues within 15 years.

“It puzzles me that countries like Bolivia are launching their own satellites,” said Heather Hudson, professor of public policy at the University of Alaska. According to Hudson, existing satellite coverage could meet rural Bolivia’s needs. “It’s like 20 or 25 years ago, when there was a wave among other countries, you had to have your own airline,” she said.

Meanwhile there are concerns about misplaced priorities. “Our priority is improving the conditions of nutrition, water and the environment,” said Isidro Paz Nina, national coordination secretary of the Movimiento Sin Miedo, a party looking to unseat President Morales in November elections. “The satellite isn’t bad, but we want people to not have to worry about suffering for lack of food.”

Delays and miscommunication have also brought frustration. “The government said that with the Tupac Katari satellite antenna, cell phones, television, the channels and all that would improve. Up until now, it hasn’t been seen,” said Victor Canabini Quispe, a 51-year-old in El Palomar. “I hope the government doesn’t deceive us,” he added.

Meanwhile, the public opening of the telecentre in El Palomar has been postponed due to delays in training a community member to run the centre and disputes over who will pay for the inauguration ceremony.

If the satellite project succeeds, it could have a big impact on life in rural Bolivia. The satellite will be a “window to the world” for children in rural areas, according to Zambrana, the Bolivian Space Agency chief. He said that many Bolivian children living in high altitude climates have never seen a tree in their lives, and will see one for the first time through satellite-delivered images.

In five years, Bolivia “will be more modern, better connected, with more educated citizens. We’re going to be a little richer – or a little less poor,” he commented.

The message is one that is resonating in at least one remote part of Bolivia – San Juan de Rosario, a small community in Bolivia’s arid southwest, and a planned telecentre site.

Gregoria Oxa Cayo owns a hotel here for tours visiting Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flats, but by necessity she lives four hours away in the larger town of Uyuni. She grew up in San Juan and her parents still live here, but she needs Internet access to run her hotel and travel agency, and there is none in the isolated desert town.

“If there was Internet here, I would live here,” she said.

The growing political uproar over the unlawful denial of European airspace for a jet carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales has spilled over into the United Nations.

Bolivian President Evo Morales. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

The 120-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest single political grouping in the world body, has expressed its “deep concern over the flagrant violation of the diplomatic immunity” of a sitting head of state.

“This serious incident put at risk the life of the Head of State of a sovereign developing country and the entourage that accompanied him by forcing the official airplane that carried him to make an emergency landing in Austria,” said the NAM statement.

“The Heads of State and their airplanes enjoy full immunity in accordance with international law,” the group asserted.

On Tuesday, a delegation of ambassadors from Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to register a formal protest over the violation of diplomatic immunity. The meeting was followed by widespread speculation that the issue may surface at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and possibly before the 193-member General Assembly in New York.

The Bolivian presidential jet was denied airspace by several European countries, including Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, while it was returning from Moscow where Morales had attended a meeting in early July.

The denial is attributed to “unfounded rumours” that the plane also carried Edward Snowden, a U.S. national and whistleblower who is in “legal limbo” in the transit lounge of the Moscow airport, after leaking details of a massive U.S. phone and Internet surveillance programme.

The administration of President Barack Obama has accused Snowden of espionage and wants him back in the United States for prosecution.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, told IPS, “It’s always interesting to me how the old and remaining powerful nations such as the United States sometimes tear off their human rights mask and undermine their pious words in the efforts to ensure continuing hegemony and empire.”

He said the forcing down of the diplomatically-protected plane of President Morales is a prime example of wielding the big stick of imperialism and trying to teach a lesson to the smaller countries of the world.

“I have no doubt it was an act of aggression under the U.N. Charter and a kidnapping of the president,” said Ratner, who is president of the Berlin-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.

In the end, he said, the law embodied in the U.N. Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is cast aside by the big powers when convenient.

“But we are in a different time,” he added. “The United States has again exposed itself as the world’s bully, as did the UK, when it threatened to extract Julian Assange (Wikileaks founder) from the Ecuador Embassy in London.”

Now, the reaction of what were once the colonies is a check on these powers, said Ratner, who is one of the U.S. attorneys for Assange and Wikileaks.

In a statement released after his meeting with Latin American envoys Tuesday, the U.N. secretary-general said he understood “the concerns which have been expressed about this unfortunate incident”.
Ban said he was relieved it did not lead to consequences for the safety of President Morales and his entourage, and it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

Ban also said “a head of state and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability”.

He expressed the hope that “all of the concerned governments will discuss these concerns amicably and in good faith, with full respect for all legitimate interests involved, and with a view to maintaining friendly relations among nations.”

At a summit meeting of Latin American political leaders in Bolivia last week, Morales said “apologies from a country that did not let us pass over its territory are not enough.”

“Some governments apologised, saying it was an error, but this was not an error,” the Bolivian president declared.

The incident also triggered strong denunciations by leaders from Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay and Argentina, among others.

Asked about the U.S. role in the denial of European airspace, State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki refused to confirm or deny whether U.S. authorities had asked other countries to deny airspace to the Bolivian plane.

“I would point you to them to describe why they made decisions if they made decisions,” she told reporters.

Ratner told IPS the laws broken by the United States and its allies that it pushed around are myriad.

President Morales’ diplomatic plane was protected and so was he as the president.

“Imagine a country forcing down Air Force One with Obama on board as the plane tried to refuel. That country would likely be obliterated,” said Ratner. “It was not only the president and his plane that were protected but so would Edward Snowden have been, had he been on the plane.”

A person seeking asylum has a right under Article 14 of the UDHR to go to a country to seek asylum from persecution. Even the United States recognises that whistle blowers are entitled to protection under the refugee convention, he added.

The U.S. actions here, and those of France, Spain and Portugal, have interfered with this important right.

“Luckily, there seems to be a tide in the world flowing over old habits of imperialism and that has the potential to limit the exploitation and power of countries that used to act with impunity,” Ratner said.

“We see it on the streets of Greece, Spain and Italy. We see it in the actions of those like Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown [all of them either whistleblowers or journalists under siege] and others who understand what is at stake: our freedom,” said Ratner.

Rafael Correa, José Mujica, Cristina Fernández, Evo Morales, Nicolás Maduro and Desiré Bouterse called for apologies over the presidential jet incident. Credit: Government of Venezuela

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Jul 5 2013 (IPS)

South American leaders demanded that the governments of France, Italy, Portugal and Spain provide explanations and public apologies to Bolivian President Evo Morales for refusing his presidential jet permission to fly through their airspace on his way home from Moscow.

Five presidents and other high-level representatives of the members of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) who held an extraordinary meeting Thursday in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba said the denial of access to the four European countries’ airspace was a violation of Morales’ rights and immunity and of international law, and set a “dangerous precedent”.

They also decided to create a commission tol follow up on the formal complaints that will be brought before the United Nations and other international bodies.

The declaration was not signed by UNASUR as a bloc but by presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, José Mujica of Uruguay and Desiré Bouterse of Suriname, as well as delegates of the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Guyana and Peru. Paraguay did not take part in the meeting because it is still suspended from the bloc as a result of the ouster of President Fernando Lugo in June 2012.

Although UNASUR announced Wednesday night that a summit would be held, the bloc failed to cobble together a quorum, and was unable to issue a declaration as a bloc, which would have required a consensus among the region’s 12 presidents.

Brazilian foreign policy adviser Marco Aurélio Garcia said President Dilma Rousseff was unable to make it to the meeting. Unofficial reports indicated that she did not attend because of the protests that have been raging in Brazil for the past two weeks.

In a communiqué isused Wednesday, Rousseff had expressed her “indignation” over the incident, saying it not only affected Bolivia but Latin America as a whole. Similar sentiments were expressed by presidents Ollanta Humala of Peru, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, and Sebastián Piñera of Chile.

Nevertheless, the absence of the four leaders was interpreted by some as a breakdown in relations among the members of UNASUR.

“What happened to Morales in Europe and the absence of some of the presidents sent out a harsh message to the countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas) because of their policies of nationalisation of companies, mistreatment of ambassadors and incompliance with international agreements,” lawmaker Luis Felipe Dorado, with the centre-right opposition National Convergence party, told IPS.

As an example, he cited Morales’ proposal to withdraw Bolivia from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Dorado also lamented that the president said Bolivia could do without the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

From pressure to protests

Prior to the meeting in Cochabamba, Fernández, Correa, Maduro and Bouterse took part in a rally in solidarity with Morales held by Bolivian social organisations.

In the rally, Morales – Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president – said Spain’s ambassador to Austria had demanded to be allowed to inspect the presidential aircraft, while the Bolivian leader was in the Vienna airport from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning.

His presidential jet has been rerouted and forced to land in Vienna, where it was grounded for 14 hours waiting for France, Italy, Portugal and Spain to revoke their airspace decision.

The incident was sparked by the suspicion that the plane was carrying whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) who released dozens of top secret documents proving that the U.S. government has been tapping global internet and phone systems on a massive scale,

The Bolivian president said the Spanish ambassador, under orders from the deputy foreign minister of Spain, attempted to force his way onto the aircraft to make sure Snowden was not there.

Morales said he told the ambassador he was a president, not a “criminal” whose plane had to be inspected before it was allowed to continue its journey.

Argentine President Fernández said at the rally that “It is curious that the countries that talk about legal security and respect for international law and human rights have committed this unprecedented violation. They should apologise for once.”

Mujca said the four European governments had made an enormous mistake. “This is embarrassing for the old countries…we aren’t colonies. When one Latin American leader is insulted, we all feel insulted.” He called for apologies instead of “unfounded arguments.”

Maduro concurred. “This is abuse and contempt of Latin America’s people because we decided to be free and to carry out democratic revolutions,” he said, after accusing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of organising the rerouting and grounding of Morales’ jet.

Correa also accused the “intelligence agencies” of the countries involved in the incident of coordinating the denial of access to their airspace. He also blamed Washington, and said the reactions against the countries governed by leaders and parties of “a new left” in Latin America were triggered by their “anti-colonialist stance.”

While the South American leaders were in Cochabamba, Morales supporters protested outside the embassies and consulates of France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United States.

In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, members of the ruling Movement to Socialism painted graffiti on the walls of the U.S. consulate.

Popular demands that the ambassadors from the four European countries be expelled found little echo among the ranks of the ruling party. But Morales said he would not be afraid to close down the U.S. embassy, because he had no doubt U.S. pressure was behind the “virtual kidnapping” of which he was victim.

Spy equipment from the Surveillance Group Limited, a British private detective agency based in Worcester, England, has been found in the Ecuadorean embassy in London where Julian Assange, editor of Wikileaks, has taken refuge.

At a press conference in Quito on Wednesday, Ricardo Patiño, the foreign minister of Ecuador, held up a photo of a “spy microphone” that was found on Jun. 14 inside a small white box that was placed in an electrical outlet behind a bookshelf. The device contained a telephone SIM card allowing it to broadcast any conversations that it picked up.

“We are requesting backing from the British government to continue with the investigation of the device found,” Patiño told reporters.

The device was discovered by embassy security staff just two days before Patiño met with Assange to discuss his predicament. It coincided with revelations from Edward Snowden, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) staffer, of the extent of U.S. National Security Agency global surveillance of ordinary citizens.

Nobody has yet come forward to claim the device and the company has denied any role. “The Surveillance Group do not and have never been engaged in any activities of this nature,” said Timothy Young, the company CEO in a press statement issued Thursday. “This is a wholly untrue assertion.”

However, a casual web search reveals that the Surveillance Group boasts of its ability to install tracking devices anywhere.

“We can justifiably claim to be the only company in the world to offer an internationally accredited, covert camera construction, concealment and deployment course,” a company website claims. “We can provide a range of bespoke, unmanned, covert camera options to gather vital video evidence in the most challenging environment or scenarios. The cameras can further be supported by the use of micro tracking devices for deployment with customer property or vehicles.”

Bugging places is just one of the services that the Surveillance Group provides to corporations and police forces.

“We are the acknowledged experts in providing Professional Witness surveillance to the police and local authorities in relation to drugs, prostitution, gang violence, hate crime and antisocial behavior,” the company says on another page on its website.

“Our work in this arena includes the detection of malpractice by employees relative to the passing of confidential company information or the infringement of restrictive covenants and breaches of contract.”

Company web pages show pictures of hooded youth smashing store windows, as well as testimonials from companies like Nike who congratulated them on helping find addresses of vendors selling counterfeit goods.

“I am extremely impressed with the service provided by the team at The Surveillance Group and would definitely recommend them for brand protection work,” Chloe Young, a Nike official, was quoted as saying.

The Surveillance Group also offers “professional diplomas” in “tactical counter surveillance” for 5,190 pounds (8,000 dollars)

However, the company appears to have completely failed to foil the plans of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, which were likely hatched in the very building that was being bugged and most certainly did not dissuade them from launching a daring international escape for the former spy, that was worthy of Hollywood.

On Jun. 23, Wikileaks staffer Sarah Harrison spirited Snowden out of Hong Kong – where he had been staying – to Moscow, taking the intelligence agencies by surprise.

The listening device is not the only way that Ecuador suspects that it is being monitored. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week quoted extensively from email correspondence between aides of President Rafael Correa, revealing that someone was hacking internal government communications.

“I suggest talking to Assange to better control the communications,” the newspaper quoted Nathalie Cely, Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.S., in a message to presidential spokesman Fernando Alvarado. “From outside… [Assange] appears to be ‘running the show’.”

The Journal said that it obtained the emails from Univision Networks, a U.S.-based Spanish TV network, but Wikileaks says that the U.S. government could well have provided them with the raw material.

It should be noted that a number of private vendors around the world provide technology to hack email communications for “lawful interception” purposes.

These incidents have stirred deep anger among government officials in Quito.

The Ecuadorian government is being “infiltrated from all sides”, said Patiño. “This is a testament to the loss of ethics at an international level in the relations that we have with other governments.”

However, the interception of emails from South American governments appears to have been just as useless as the bugging at foiling Snowden’s plans. On Tuesday, the U.S. government sparked a diplomatic crisis by attempting to block a flight by President Evo Morales of Bolivia, under the suspicion that he was transporting Snowden. Morales was detained at Vienna airport for 14 hours but eventually completed his journey.

“Sieging/bugging of Ecuador’s London embassy and the blockading of Morales jet shows that imperial arrogance is the gift that keeps on giving,” tweeted Wikileaks.

Evo Morales at a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York . Credit: Mathieu Vaas/IPS

By Diana Cariboni and Jared Metzker
MONTEVIDEO/WASHINGTON , Jul 4 2013 (IPS)

The suspicion that Bolivian President Evo Morales’ jet was carrying Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who has become Washington´s public enemy number one, triggered an unprecedented international incident.

Four European countries – France, Italy, Spain and Portugal – denied Morales’ presidential jet permission to fly through their airspace on his way back from Moscow to La Paz.

Snowden, the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) who released dozens of top secret documents proving that the U.S. government has been tapping global internet and phone systems on a massive scale, is in hiding in the Moscow airport.

Morales’ aircraft was rerouted and forced to land in Austria, where it was stuck on the tarmac for 14 hours. The governments implicated in the incident brandished technical explanations, and after hours of heated negotiations, the presidential jet was allowed to take off again.

While it was grounded, the plane and its passengers were apparently subjected to some kind of inspection, the scope of which is not yet clear. But afterwards, Austria’s foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, stated that there were only Bolivian citizens in the aircraft.

The incident violates international law, because aircraft carrying national leaders have diplomatic immunity. Bolivian diplomats complained at the United Nations that Morales had been “kidnapped” during the time he was grounded in Austria. And the indignation spread to other South American governments.

An extraordinary meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has been convened for Thursday in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to discuss the issue.
Morales, who along with other presidents from the region was in Russia for an oil and gas conference, had expressed sympathy for Snowden’s plight. The whistleblower has been desperately seeking asylum in different countries since his passport was revoked and he was charged with espionage. In the last few days Snowden has applied for asylum in 21 countries. But as of yet he hasn’t received a response from any government.

Washington has not tried to conceal its efforts to block any attempt to offer asylum to the 30-year-old former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

But U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki largely evaded questions as to whether communications between the U.S. and the European countries which denied the airspace had led to the rerouting of Morales’ presidential jet. “Ask them,” she said.

She was only willing to acknowledge that U.S. officials had been in touch with “a broad range of countries” in recent days with regard to Snowden.

It is clear that some of those contacts bore fruit. After receiving a phone call from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that neither he nor officials in Quito had given authorisation for travel documents that the consul in London issued to Snowden.

The consul in question is in the Ecuadorean embassy in Britain, where Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, has been living since June 2012. Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012.

“While we still do not know what role the U.S. played (in rerouting the plane), it is hard to believe the U.S. did not exert pressure to ensure Snowden was not on the plane, as they apparently suspected,” Coletta Younger, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

“It was a huge tactical blunder and a breach of diplomatic protocol (by whoever decided to deny the airspace). But it sent a strong message that whoever takes Snowden in will face serious repercussions from the U.S.,” she added.

“I think this could backfire. The Latin Americans are so outraged that it could facilitate the decision to take Snowden in,” Younger said.

Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said “It seems either the U.S. had something to do (with the decision to deny the airspace) or it was done out of a sense of solidarity with the U.S.

It is possible they made the decision alone based on a recognition of how serious this issue is to the U.S.”

Shifter said that normally such a drastic step would indicate a state of war. He described it as “An extreme overreaction…Whatever one thinks about Snowden or Morales, it seems like this was disrespectful of international law.”

He also said the incident “looks terrible in political terms.“It was out of proportion. It reflects a patronising, paternalistic mindset that stronger countries can bully weaker ones.”

But he disagreed with Younger that it would facilitate a Latin American refuge for Snowden. “What this ultimately underscores is how seriously the U.S. regards this case,” he said.

“It may be tempting to take Snowden in in order to needle the U.S., but the consequences of that will have to be taken into consideration. The U.S., for all its weaknesses, is still the U.S.,” he said.