The case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has exposed the double standard of Western countries in deciding on what is right and wrong. They often suit their decisions on their own biases. And so we applaud Ecuador President Rafael Correa for standing up to the West and gave Assange an asylum in his country's embassy in the United Kingdom instead of allowing him to be extradited to Sweden, which is said to be willing to send him to the US to face trial for leaking sensitive information. The asylum came at a time when the Australian whistle blower's own country did not stand up for him, valuing instead its ties with the US and UK. The Ecuadorean president raised a valid question: Why did the UK want to extradite Assange to Sweden when it did not extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet after his 1998 arrest in London on the basis of an international warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is now heading Assange's legal team? How serious was Assange's case as compared to Pinochet's? The Chilean dictator was accused of killing thousands of his own people after toppling Salvador Allende in a bloody coup with the help of the CIA. Pinochet was never tried for many cases filed against him until his death in December 2006. Was it because Pinochet was an ally of the US and other Western countries while Assange is not?
