'Apologise, admit mistake,' Assange hits back after Mayawati's asylum offer
FP Editors Sep 6, 2011
Earlier in the day, reacting to the damning US diplomatic cables
revealed by WikiLeaks recently, Mayawati had said that the "owner of
WikiLeaks needs to be in a mental asylum''. Calling the content of the
cables "mischievous, baseless, wrong and shameless", she had offered
to find a place for Assange in the mental asylum near Agra if his
government failed to do so.
The cables call her "a first-rate egomaniac" who wants to be the Prime
Minister of India and a virtually "paranoid dictator'' among other
unflattering things. They also say that she once a sent a private jet
to Mumbai for a pair of shoes and that she had institutionalised
corruption in the state.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Mayawati, without naming Assange, said he was either working with her
political opponents or had "gone mad". On the shoes issue, which has
generated a lot of curiosity, she said, "As far as I am concerned, I
do not know of any such thing. But if WikiLeaks and BJP leaders are
making such a wild claim, then I would like to ask them, if they also
flew down in that plane to get me those special sandals?"
She said the WikiLeaks was "playing into the hands of opposition parties".
Replying to her, Assange said, "Mayawati has betrayed rational
thought. The question is, has she also betrayed the Dalits? There is
no question that the documents are official papers from the US
embassy. These papers have been proven the world over, including by
the aggressive persecution of our people by Washington.
The allegations within them are made by US diplomats in their private
communications back to Hillary Clinton. If Chief Minister Mayawati has
a problem with the contents of these communications she need to take
it up with Hillary."
Assange asked Mayawati to admit her error and apologise. "Should she
fail to do so, she is welcome to send her private jet to England to
collect me, where I have been detained against my will, under house
arrest, for the last 272 days. I would be happy to accept asylum,
political asylum, in India–a nation I love. In return, I will bring
Mayawati a range of the finest British footwear."
Senior BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra termed the WikiLeaks report
about Mayawati as "baseless and wrong" and said there was a conspiracy
against the party ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
"This is an absolute lie and is totally baseless. Whosoever has
published this, should have verified and then gone ahead with this
news," he told reporters in New Delhi.
He said newspapers should have considered this before publishing the
contents of the cables. "That is why we have decided that we will take
legal action against the newspapers and TV channels who have shown it
and the people behind this will soon be exposed," he added.
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