Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. thanked the Canadian government for accepting the asylum request of a Filipina who helped Wikileaks founder Edward Snowden hide in Hong Kong.
“Thank you Canada, we owe you big time,” Locsin said in a tweet in response to a news item about Canada granting asylum to Filipina Vanessa Rodel and her seven-year old daughter Keana.
Meanwhile, Snowden on Monday tweeted his thanks to the Canadian government for taking the family.
He said: “Thank you to all those in Canada and around the world who have made this possible. After so many years, the first of the families who helped me is free and has a future. But the work is not over – with solidarity and compassion, Canada can save them all.”
The whistleblower has also constantly been retweeting news and updates about the Filipina and her daughter.
Rodel allowed Snowden to stay in her apartment in Hong Kong in 2013 when the former CIA employee was running from US authorities.
Snowden was in Hong Kong when he first started leaking highly classified documents of US agencies.
Called “Wikileaks,” the documents exposed US state secrets, surveillance tactics and defense strategies all over the world. While the US government officials call him a traitor, others call him a “patriot” for risking his life in exposing US National Security Agency’s alleged illegal espionage activities. Snowden is now in exile in Russia.
Rodel was also an asylum seeker in Hong Kong but her application was denied in 2010. She had since bonded with other asylum seekers in Hong Kong. It was a Canada-based lawyer who was working with Snowden who called this group of asylum seekers to help shelter Snowden.
It is not known how the US is responding to Canada’s granting of asylum seeker to one of Snowden’s accomplices. A spokesman for the US State Department tossed back media queries to the Canadian government.
Locsin lauded Canada’s decision saying that this is “huge” favor for the Philippines not only on the case of Rodel but “for standing nearly alone on the planet as last rampart of decency, the rarest quality in the relations of nations.”
Photo credit: AFP Photo/Cole BURSTON
