The initial call was issued by Laurent Joffrin, the influential managing editor of Libération, the Paris-based newspaper that partnered with WikiLeaks to release the NSA documents earlier this week. In a leading editorial
published in the paper on Thursday, Joffrin said that French protests
against NSA spying “have no more effect than scolding a rude toddler”,
and added that by offering asylum to Snowden, France would “stand up [to
America] and send a clear and effective message to Washington”.
Shortly after Joffrin’s editorial,
Jean-Christophe Lagarde, president of the centrist Union of Democrats
and Independents in the French Parliament, said that France should have
given Snowden political asylum back in 2013, when he originally
requested it. Lagarde was quoted
in the French press as saying that “the French nation has already been
dishonored by refusing to accept Edward Snowden’s request for political
asylum when he asked for it in 2013”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist
member of the European Parliament, agreed
with Lagarde, adding that Assange and Snowden must not only receive
political asylum in France, but also be given “the French nationality”.
On Thursday afternoon, Jean-Pierre Mignard, a close friend and longtime political advisor to President Hollande, said
that “given the service they have rendered to the cause of human
freedom, France could accommodate a request for asylum from Assange and
Snowden, should they request it”. Mignard added that “French law allows
the Republic to grant asylum to any foreign subject who faces
persecution for taking action in favor of human freedom”.
When asked by BFM TV, France’s most
popular news channel, whether political asylum could be extended to
Snowden and Assange, France’s Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said
that she was “absolutely shocked by the idea”, because such a course of
action would drive a powerful wedge between France and the US, two
countries with deep historical ties. But she added
that such a move would constitute a strong “symbolic gesture” against
espionage, and thus remained on the table as a possible policy maneuver
to be adopted by the government of France.
Late on Thursday, however, France’s Prime
Minister Manuel Valls indicated that any discussion of an offer of
asylum to Assange and Snowden by the government of France was premature.
Speaking
at a hastily organized press conference to discuss the NSA espionage
revelations during an official visit to Colombia, Valls told reporters
that the question of offering asylum to the two men “did not arise”
during internal government talks. “And in any case”, said Valls, such an
initiative “would not address the issue at hand”, namely American
espionage against the French presidency. France’s goal is to extract
guarantees from Washington that all espionage against French officials
would stop, noted the French prime minister. If France offered asylum to
Assange and Snowden, American espionage against French targets would
likely reach unprecedented levels, he added.
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