Ecuador says Assange must ‘do his own laundry’
Ecuador has said that Julian Assange must now sort out his own issues and that they are not “obliged to do his laundry”.
Foreign minister Jose Valencia said in an interview that Ecuador’s only responsibility was looking after Mr Assange’s wellbeing, after the Australian national sued the country over new conditions placed on his asylum in the London embassy.
He also added that Ecuador does not plan to intervene with the British government on behalf of the WikiLeaks founder in talks over his situation at the South American country’s London embassy.
“Ecuador has no responsibility to take any further steps,” Mr Valencia said. “We are not Mr Assange’s lawyers, nor are we representatives of the British government. This is a matter to be resolved between Assange and Great Britain.”
Mr Valencia added that he was “frustrated” by Mr Assange’s decision to file a suit in an Ecuadorean court last week over new terms of his asylum, which required him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat. “There is no obligation in international agreements for Ecuador to pay for things like Mr Assange’s laundry,” he said.
Greg Barns, an Australian lawyer advising Mr Assange, said in an email that “developments in the case in recent times” showed the need for Australia’s government to intervene to assist “one of its citizens who faces real danger”.
This position marks a departure from Ecuador’s previous practice of maintaining dialogue with British authorities over Mr Assange’s situation since granting him asylum in 2012, when he took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case. That case has since been dropped, but friends and supporters have said that Mr Assange now fears he could be arrested and eventually extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy.
WikiLeaks, which published US diplomatic and military secrets when Mr Assange ran the operation, faces a US grand jury investigation.