Snowden attacks curbs on human rights in Russia
(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Oslo: Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden yesterday criticised Russia — the country that has granted him asylum — calling its crackdown on human rights and online freedom “fundamentally wrong” and said he would prefer not to live in exile.
Snowden said Moscow’s restrictions on the web were “a mistake in policy” and “fundamentally wrong” as he accepted a Norwegian freedom of expression prize by videophone from Russia.
“It’s wrong in Russia and it would be wrong anywhere” said Snowden 32 who sought asylum in Russia two years ago after Washington filed a warrant for his arrest for having leaked documents that revealed the vast scale of US surveillance programmes.
Pushed on Moscow’s deteriorating human rights record the whistleblower said the situation is “disappointing it’s frustrating” and described restrictions on the Internet as part of a wider problem in Russia.
“I’ve been quite critical of (it) in the past and I’ll continue to be in the future because this drive that we see in the Russian government to control more and more the Internet to control more and more what people are seeing even parts of personal lives deciding what is the appropriate or inappropriate way for people to express their love for one another...(is) fundamentally wrong” he said.
Snowden said he had “never intended to go to Russia that was never my plan” and that he had been transiting the country en route for Latin America when US officials cancelled his passport. “I applied for asylum in 21 countries” he told the audience at the ceremony for the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression’s Bjornson Prize. “They were all silent. Russia was actually one of the last countries in that sequence that I applied for.”
The computer expert had left his job with a contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Hawaii in May 2013 in order to leak his trove of classified information to the British newspaper The Guardian from Hong Kong.
He recalled that the idea of leaving that city for Russia had been suggested by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — who himself had to seek asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
“I think his (Assange’s) intention was good. He was focused primarily on my safety as a publisher and having a source he was interested in the source protection angle” said Snowden.
“But for me the problem is I wasn’t interested in my own safety my own protection. I never expected to be free today. I expected to be in prison.”
The technical expert also criticised many “developed countries” for ignoring the public’s concern about intelligence monitoring by imposing more restrictive laws which he said turn out to be useless.
Despite his extraordinary situation Snowden described his life as “normal” while adding: “I mean I would prefer to live in my own country.” “But exile is exile” he said.
AFP