Gustavo Petro rejects U.S. military strikes near Venezuela and likens Gaza to Nazi experiments.

On Monday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned the U.S. “decertification” of his country and accused the United Nations of being an “accomplice” to a global anti-drug policy that he said has failed.

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“I am a president decertified by a foreign government. By what right, under international law, can the president of a foreign government decertify another president who was elected by his own people? Is that democracy or the beginning of barbarism?” he said during a high-level dialogue in New York on climate financing, held as part of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump´s administration decided to “decertify” Colombia, meaning it removed the South American nation from the list of countries deemed to be complying with the fight against drug trafficking in 2024.

Petro criticized the UN for defining whether a drug is “poisonous” depending on the country that produces it. To illustrate, he noted that alcohol is not considered by the United Nations to be as dangerous a substance as cannabis because alcohol is largely produced in the North, not in the South.

Rejection of U.S. Military Actions in the Caribbean

The Colombian president also referred to recent U.S. military attacks in international waters near Venezuela against ships allegedly carrying drugs.

He said the South is the victim of a drug control approach that leads to “the murder of young people, who are not to blame, with missiles ordered by a president of the United States.”

Petro stressed that the “War on Drugs” is a “misguided policy” and an “outright failure” because “it was never a war against drug traffickers, but “a dominant global power policy of the North over the South.”

He argued that this failed policy blames substances or objects instead of targeting those who profit from the drug business and live in “New York, Miami or Dubai.”

“The missiles don’t go there. The missiles go to the poor. This is the same global power that prevents solving the climate crisis and therefore makes it impossible for humanity to survive. It is the same global power that drops bombs on Gaza… and does so to continue dominating the world,” Petro declared.

For the Colombian leader, the so-called fight against drug trafficking and anti-immigrant policies fall within a “war between greed and life,” in which the United States and Europe believe “a superior race exists, and that is why Colombians are treated in the streets as if they were slaves.”

“What they are doing in Gaza is an experiment just like Hitler’s, when he began testing gas chambers and concentration camps,” Petro said. He then reiterated the need to end the genocide in Gaza and called for the creation of a UN protection force.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

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