Here's more icing on the cake of American hypocrisy (which makes me even more creeped out by Romney's devotion to "exceptionalism"): America has refused to extradite Bolivia's ex-president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, to face genocide charges.
Glenn Greenwald has a piece with much more detail about this sordid story, here:
[In 2003, Bolivia's president] sent his security forces to suppress growing popular protests against the government's energy and globalization policies. Using high-powered rifles and machine guns, his military forces killed 67 men, women and children, and injured 400 more, almost all of whom were poor and from the nation's indigenous Aymara communities. Dozens of protesters had been killed by government forces in the prior months. . . The resulting outrage . . . drove Sanchez de Lozada from office and then into exile in the U.S., where he was welcomed by his close allies in the Bush administration . . . [who let him] live under a shield of asylum ever since.
In 2007, Bolivia formally charged him with genocide and subsequently demanded his extradition from the U.S. so that he could stand trial; however, on Friday night we learned that we refused Bolivia's extradition request.
This is, of course, consistent with our country looking the other way at human rights violations over the past decade. But what adds insult to injustice here is that the U.S. is so exercised by Ecuador's grant of asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because of his well-founded fear of political persecution that would result from being extradited to Sweden (to face sexual assault allegations, not charges), which would promptly extradite him to the U.S., which has apparently indicted him in secret.
Why all the outrage over Ecuador's decision, but not over the one our country just made?
Assange is facing sexual assault allegations in Sweden. He has not been charged with any crime. Many believe the allegations are a pretext to get him to Sweden because Assange has offered to answer Sweden's questions from the safety of the Ecuadorian embassy before he was even granted asylum. Sweden declined.
I'm troubled that there seems to be little, if any, outrage in our country over our shielding Sanchez de Lozada from facing genocide and crimes against humanity CHARGES back in Bolivia, but we are quick to cry foul at Ecuador's grant of asylum to Assange, to face the sexual assault ALLEGATIONS back in a country that has a bad reputation for extraditing asylum grantees to the U.S. for mistaken rendition and torture.
This bipartisan shielding of Sanchez de Lozada is mystifying and contemptible--especially when the U.S. has conducted a worldwide manhunt for, and indicted in secret, a website founder.