Ecuador Suspends Assange's Communication Access at UK Embassy

The Ecuadorean government Wednesday restricted access to communications of the journalist and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who has been in Ecuador’s embassy in the U.K. since 2012, for violating an agreement in which he had pledged not to comment on the affairs of other countries.

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"The government of Ecuador suspended the systems that allow Julian Assange to communicate with the outside world from the Ecuadorian embassy in London," the Secretary of Communication said Wednesday in a press release, in which he affirms that the decision began to be applied a day earlier.

“The measure was adopted after Assange's failure to comply with the written commitment reached with the government in December 2017, in which he was obliged not to issue messages that implied interference in relation to other states."

The Ecuadorean government is worried that Assange's use of social media can hurt the "good relations the country keeps with the United Kingdom, other countries in the European Union and other nations," and said it was prepared to take further actions if Assange keeps breaking his commitment. 

Being a critical commentator and politicallly persecuted, Assange usually comments on international affairs on his Twitter account.

In recent days, he criticized Germany's decision to arrest the Catalan pro-independence leader Carles Puigdemont on behalf of the Spanish government. Assange has been a fierce supporter of the Catalan independence movement and promoted last year's referendum, considered illegal by Spanish central authorities.

He also offered to testify in relation to the Cambridge Analytica case, after evidence surfaced about their involvement in Donald Trump's presidency campaign and working with groups that supported a "yes" vote in U.K.'s Brexit refrenedum.

But the comment that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back is his response to U.K.'s Europe and the Americas Minister Alan Duncan, who called Assange a "miserable little worm" that should walk out of the embassy and give himself up to British justice.

Assange couldn't refrain from commenting and answered Duncan through a tweet: "As a political prisoner detained without charge for 8 years, in violation of 2 UN rulings, I suppose I must be "miserable"; yet nothing wrong with being a "little" person although I'm rather tall; and better a "worm", a healthy creature that invigorates the soil, than a snake."