For some on the ground in Ecuador, however, the ironies surrounding this power play are great. While the country has been exalted from afar for its radical environmental rights legislation, and it is unquestionable that it has achieved impressive gains in fighting illiteracy, improving access to primary school, and increasing cash transfers to single women and low-income families, the administration that now claims to be defending Assange on the grounds of protecting "freedom of the press," has been involved in repeated and aggressive attacks on its own national media.
As highlighted by groups like Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Correa has gone violently after mainstream newspapers, like the Guayaquil-based El Universo, whose opinion editor was sued by the administration in 2011 for defamation of character and subsequently sentenced to 3 years in prison and a $40 million dollar fine (subsequently rescinded).
While such ironies anger those who are losing faith in "the citizen's revolution" overseen by Correa's Alianza Pais, it should not be forgotten that Correa has good reason to both fear the duplicities of the United States and to support those - anywhere, of any nationality - who seek to expose them.
For more than four years after the signing of the agreement for the U.S. military base in Manta in 1999, the U.S. military allegedly sunk eight Ecuadorian-flagged fishing vessels in Ecuadorian territorial waters in flagrant violation of the terms of the agreement. In 2008, when Colombian forces violated Ecuadorian sovereignty by killing Raul Reyes - a lead commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - in the northern province of Sucumbios, it was believed that they had done so with information provided by the U.S. government. And as Correa himself recognises, the U.S. has for a long time been actively funding anti-progressive police forces within the country.
Since he took office in 2007, he has worked hard to eradicate such influence from Ecuadorian politics - and as a result, he is perhaps excessively sympathetic to the sorts of revelations made public by Julian Assange.
While the desire to step into a clearly defined leadership position within the Bolivarian Revolution is doubtless at play here, there is also no reason to doubt Correa's well-founded concerns about the assaults on Ecuadorian sovereignty in which the U.S. has long been engaged.
