{"id":32038,"date":"2013-07-22T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=32038"},"modified":"2015-05-06T09:00:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:00:04","slug":"a-world-citizen-passport-and-edward-snowdens-catch-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/07\/a-world-citizen-passport-and-edward-snowdens-catch-22\/","title":{"rendered":"A World Citizen Passport and Edward Snowden\u2019s Catch 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fate of Edward J. Snowden still held in the transit area of Moscow\u2019s airport has nearly overshadowed the debate on the methods and extent of the National Security Agency\u2019s surveillance and collection of information which Snowden made public.\u00a0\u00a0Each day brings more information about the degree of cooperation among the\u00a0Silicon Valley\u00a0firms and US intelligence services and between the\u00a0US\u00a0intelligence services and those of other countries such as Germany and England.<\/p>\n

Living in the transit area at the airport for several weeks and potentially longer was not Snowden\u2019s plan when he left\u00a0Hong Kong.\u00a0\u00a0As I had been blocked in the same transit area for three days in 1977 under the mistaken impression that I would be given a Soviet visa at the airport, unless things have improved greatly since the end of the USSR, it is not the sort of place where one wants to stay for a long time: a third class motel with an armed guard at each floor.<\/p>\n

He thought that he could travel to\u00a0Moscow\u00a0and then Havana and on to Ecuador,\u00a0Nicaragua\u00a0or\u00a0Venezuela. However, before Snowden could make a Havana connection, the\u00a0US\u00a0government revoked his passport, and\u00a0Ecuador\u00a0withdrew the safe-conduct pass he had used to leave\u00a0Hong Kong\u00a0saying it had been issued by a consular official in contravention of Ecuadorean law.\u00a0\u00a0Without a travel document or a Russian visa, Snowden has no way to travel outside the transit area even to the Embassies of Ecuador or Nicaragua or Venezuela which are considered by diplomatic convention as being the territory of that particular state.<\/p>\n

The degree of\u00a0US\u00a0pressure was evident when\u00a0France,\u00a0Italy,\u00a0Portugal\u00a0and\u00a0Spain\u00a0refused to allow Bolivian President Evo Morales\u2019 official jet to overfly their territory on its way from Moscow\u00a0to\u00a0La Paz\u00a0after a rumor, no doubt planted by US agents, that Snowden might be aboard.\u00a0Morales\u2019 plane ultimately landed in\u00a0Vienna,\u00a0Austria\u00a0for 13 hours until Spanish officials were satisfied that Snowden was not on board. Why it took 13 hours to check all the hiding places on a small jet has not been explained, but the move no doubt discourages any commercial lines no matter what over-flight agreements they have.<\/p>\n

Snowden\u2019s presence in the\u00a0Moscow\u00a0airport transit area has attracted too much attention for the Russian police to look the other way while Snowden is taken to a Latin American embassy.\u00a0\u00a0It is not clear that anyone wants to repeat the experience of\u00a0Ecuador\u00a0which has allowed WikiLeaks\u2019 Julian Assange to live in its London Embassy for over a year.<\/p>\n

To break out of Snowden\u2019s \u201cCatch 22\u201d situation of no passport-to travel-no travel- no asylum \u2013 a world citizen passport was issued to Snowden<\/a> on July 7, 2013 by Garry Davis, who founded the Registry of World Citizens<\/a> in 1949, and today is the president of the World Government of World Citizens, which has issued hundreds of thousands of passports since its creation. The world passport is now reportedly<\/a> in Snowden’s hands.<\/p>\n

\"wpassport\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the ironies of the world citizen movement is that it has always used the symbols of a nation-state \u2014 a flag, an identity card, a passport \u2014 to symbolize a loyalty to the welfare of the Planet.\u00a0\u00a0The philosophy behind the identity cards and passports is that of world law \u2014 that is, international law as applied to the individual:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAll human beings are entitled to the enjoyment of political, civil, economic, and social rights as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various treaties and covenants adopted in furtherance of that declaration.\u201d<\/p>\n

In practice, some people have crossed frontiers with world citizen passports and world citizen identity cards and often had the passport stamped with an official stamp. It is not sure that the frontier officials knew what they were stamping or were very aware of cosmopolitan ideals. It is likely that most officials don\u2019t want long lines of people waiting at frontier posts or filling transit areas at airports.\u00a0\u00a0Article 13(2) of the Universal Declarations sets out the right to leave and return to one\u2019s country, though it does not speak of the right to travel to other countries.<\/p>\n

It may be that Putin would be happy to have the whole Snowden story go away.\u00a0\u00a0While I have never thought of Putin as a \u201cworld citizen\u201d type, let us hope that he allows the airport officials to stamp the world citizen passport in recognition of the growing global spirit.<\/p>\n

The world passport and the pulling by Ecuador of its safe-conduct pass brings to mind an event I knew but had not thought about until a recent\u00a0New<\/i> York Times<\/i> article highlighted the efforts of Aristides de Sousa Mendes who was consul of Portugal in Bordeaux when Germany invaded France in 1940.\u00a0\u00a0France\u00a0already had a good number of refugees from\u00a0Germany,\u00a0Central Europe, Republican Spain as well as French, particularly Jews who feared what Nazi policy in France\u00a0might bring.\u00a0\u00a0De Sousa Mendes and his staff worked day and night and issued 30,000 visas so people could escape to Portugal and then beyond.<\/p>\n

It took a couple of months before the Fascist government in Lisbon realized what was going on, recalled de Sousa Mendes, fired him and informed the Spanish government of Franco not to recognize the visas issued in France.\u00a0\u00a0De Sousa Mendes died in poverty, but his travel documents had saved many lives.<\/p>\n

The world citizen passport is not a governmental document the way de Sousa Mendes\u2019 were, but world citizen passports and identity cards are a symbol of a \u201chigher law\u201d than that of states.\u00a0\u00a0Let us hope that some Russian officials are in tune with the higher law.<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To break out of Snowden\u2019s \u201cCatch 22\u201d situation of no passport-to travel-no travel- no asylum \u2013 a world citizen passport was issued to Snowden on July 7, 2013 by Garry Davis, who founded the Registry of World Citizens in 1949, and today is the president of the World Government of World Citizens. The world passport is now reportedly in Snowden’s hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}