President Donald Trump used this tribune built for peace to announce wars

Transcription

1 President Donald Trump used this tribune built for peace to announce wars INTERVENTION OF THE MINISTER OF PEOPLE S POWER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA IN THE GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE SEVENTEENTH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY New York, September 25,

2 Mr. President We turn to this great Assembly in its 72nd term on behalf of the Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, and consequently, on behalf of a sovereign people, lovers of Peace, respect between nations and the fulfilment of the purest principles of International Law, the Bolivarian People of Venezuela. In the nineteenth century, the liberating army of Simon Bolivar left Venezuela, not to conquer or dominate, but to help sister nations gain their independence, and then return home with the satisfaction of having been useful to the cause of freedom and equality. That is the spirit that characterizes our people and the actions of our revolutionary government in times so difficult for humanity. That is why we always cling to the Bolivarian Peace Diplomacy. Precisely, we are in the house of Peace, in the home of peaceful solutions, in the territory of international law and its principles. The Charter of the United Nations embraces and protects us, a noble multilateral instrument to avoid wars and injustices. This podium, therefore, should be respected, protected, cared for by all nations. An almost sacred platform for the people who are placing their stakes on peace and understanding. However, this house, that of multilateralism and respect for equality between peoples and States, has been profaned, disrespected and offended, over and over again, by arrogant powers, which seek to impose their unilateral playing rules, the rules of war, suffering and pain. Commander Hugo Chavez was already denouncing it in 2006, in this same site, in a loud and unequalled voice, trying to turn on the alarms to generate the necessary containment to face the then serious unilateral threats to world peace. However, a week ago, this room and the world, through the media, witnessed another dangerous desecration of the principles and purposes of the United Nations. Like a world emperor, US President Donald Trump used this tribune built for peace to announce wars, total destruction of member states, unilateral and illegal coercive measures, threatening and judging at will, as if he had dictatorial powers over sovereign members States of our organization. Paradoxically, in a flurry of audacity and political hypocrisy, Donald Trump, grounded his attacks on humanity, on the values of peace and prosperity. In our case, let us recall that former President Barak Obama, with a different style but with the same objective, had defined the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as an unusual and extraordinary threat by the executive order for US national security on March 9, Today, we have the obligation to denounce before the world that our people have been directly threatened by the President of the United States with the use of the most powerful military force that ever existed in the history of mankind on August 11 of this year. As a complement to such anachronism and offense to our sovereignty and the peace that has characterized our Latin America and Caribbean, the Trump administration imposed illegal economic sanctions on our economy on August 25, in order to make our people suffer, to force non-democratic changes in our system of government. In his speech a week ago, Donald Trump 2 We have the obligation to denounce before the world that our people have been directly threatened by the President of the United States

3 appealed to the far-fetched ideological rhetoric of the Cold War, in the best inquisitive style of Richard Nixon and Senator Joseph McCarthy, to reiterate his threats against our country and against the sister Republic of Cuba. Venezuela will always seek dialogue with mutual respect with the United States government. However, as the free people we are, we are ready to defend our sovereignty, our independence and our democracy in any scenario and under any modality. Faced with such attitudes, the United Nations must generate effective mechanisms to neutralize the pretensions of war and the intentions to supplant multilateralism, which has been so hard to consolidate, by the dictatorial unilateralism of those who seek to impose with the use of weapons and economic blackmail, destruction and the unique thought in our diverse and heterogeneous humanity. In this regard, last Tuesday, unanimously of its 120 members, two thirds of this august General Assembly, the Non-Aligned Movement adopted the Political Declaration of New York as a tool for denouncing, condemning and joint action against coercive and unilateral measures that certain international parties are imposing in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations. In our intervention on behalf of the NAM Presidency at the G77 plenary session last Thursday, we proposed to extend the New York Declaration to this group of countries that focuses on economic affairs, as the ruthless unilateral attacks against the economies of our peoples, form an essential part of these illegal, unilateral and coercive measures. We must urgently seek multilateral responses to avoid imposing coercive measures and even so that the governments that have illegally imposed them be legally obliged to compensate the peoples who have suffered their effects. In this regard, we condemn all unilateral actions against sister nations such as Russia and Iran, and especially the extension of the criminal blockade against the sister Republic of Cuba that has been imposed for more than 5 decades, and which on this occasion reflects the clear demonstration of the new airs 3 the United Nations must generate effective mechanisms to neutralize the pretensions of war and the intentions to supplant multilateralism

4 Venezuela is strongly opposed to the existence of nuclear weapons on our planet of American unilateralism. Venezuela is strongly opposed to the existence of nuclear weapons on our planet. Its possession submits humanity to unjustifiable and unimaginable anguish and risk. That is why we signed last Wednesday the Nuclear Arms Prohibition Treaty. We must make a supreme effort, so that the nuclear crises de-escalate and disappear (hopefully with their weapons) through dialogue and humanistic rationality. In the area of Human Rights, Venezuela, a country that in recent years has made a supreme effort to guarantee the widest social investment, with a fair redistribution of the national wealth among Venezuelans, precisely to guarantee their human and social rights, has also been fingered and accused by the US government. If any country does not deserve to belong to the United Nations Human Rights Council, it is precisely the United States of America. It is the main violator of human rights, not only in its territory, but throughout the world. Unjustified warfare, shelling of civilians, clandestine prisons with the application of torture methods, imposition of unilateral unlawful measures against economies of several countries, diverse economic pressures, and reckless migratory policies. It is the only country that has dared to use nuclear weapons against another people, generating hundreds of thousands of deaths. A country that, in violation of the UN s essential institutional framework, led the 2003 invasion of Iraq, under the guise of the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, which they never found, despite the more than one million deaths generated by that bloody military operation. The United States is building the wall on the border with Mexico and there are bills to take 7% to immigrants remittances, not for social security, but to finance the construction of the contemptible wall. Using verifiable data from UN agencies and rapporteurships, we can conclude that: The United States has not ratified 62% of the main human rights treaties; in the USA there is no independent institution for the defence and promotion of human rights; the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial and arbitrary executions denounces the lack of independence of the judiciary in the United States; solitary confinement is an extended practice in this country; the number of homeless reaches 3.5 million, 1.5 million children among them; 28% of people in poverty have no health coverage; the maternal mortality rate has skyrocketed in recent years, 10,000 children are placed in adult prisons, children can be sentenced to life imprisonment (70% of them 4

5 Roosevelt Skerrit said that these small countries are becoming the victims of a war they did not choose, that they did not start and that they are not part of African American); the Special Rapporteur for Education has denounced the use of electric shocks and physical means of coercion in study centres; the United States is one of the 7 countries in the world that has not ratified the convention for the elimination of discrimination against women; in the USA paid maternity leave is not compulsory; allegations of police abuses, especially against the African American population, are common; more than 10 million African Americans remain in poverty, half of them in abject poverty; in a country where slavery is supposed to be abolished, the thirteenth amendment admits slavery as a mode of criminal conviction; one in three American indigenous women is raped throughout their lives; it is a country where racial discrimination is not only not surpassed, but also re-emerges with the supremacist positions of the current government. 5 Sorry for the detail, but there is data and information that the media conceal and that the whole world must know. Venezuela rejects terrorism in all its forms, both from violent anarchist groups that today threaten global peace and stability, as well as terrorism by states that assume the right to intervene at will around the world, seeking control of strategic natural resources, using for that purpose compassionless military force against innocent civilians. We see with pain as the Mediterranean Sea has become an immense cemetery, many times before the blind and inclement eyes of States responsible for the crises generated in the countries of origin of the migrants, through the combination of both variants of terrorism. Induced and bloody wars like the prefabricated ones against Syria and Libya, leave only desolation in its passage. Fortunately, the heroic Syrian people and government, with the support of just international allies, is increasingly closer to a definitive victory over terrorist groups. Venezuela wishes to see success in the work being undertaken by the Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism as the head and general coordinator of the United Nations Global Strategy. Venezuela hopes that these efforts will also condemn state terrorism. Venezuela encourages the resumption of peace negotiations between Palestine and Israel, the process of which should lead to a firm and lasting peace between the two States, recognizing as Palestinian borders the ones existing in 1967, in accordance with international law, as well as the establishment of East Jerusalem as its capital. We believe that the United Nations must assume a much more leading role in resolving this historic and unjust conflict. We are grateful to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, for his sincere efforts to facilitate the implementation of the Geneva Agreement through the Good Offices mechanism, in order to seek a practical and satisfactory solution for the parties, in the case of the territorial controversy that we maintain with our brothers and neighbours of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Bolivarian Venezuela will always be willing to help to open roads of peace.

6 That is why we congratulate the implementation of the peace agreements between the Government of Colombia and the FARC, to which both President Chávez and President Nicolás Maduro devoted so much effort and energy. Likewise, we will continue to accompany and facilitate the talks between the government of Colombia and the ELN, which are being held in the Republic of Ecuador. Venezuela is not a drug-producing country. This is certified by international institutions. We collaborate in a sovereign way with all neighbouring and non-neighbouring countries in the fight against drug trafficking. We express our concern about the increase in drug production in our neighbouring Colombia. However, we have always denounced the fact that it is the consumer countries that are mainly responsible because they constitute powerful poles of attraction, both for production and for drug trafficking, and that they must take real control of the entry and distribution of drugs in their territory. As we have been working on for years with the UNDP, for Venezuela to advance in the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Objectives is simple, because our Plan of the Homeland in Action and the 2030 Agenda, are not only coincident but also complementary instruments. As for its financing, you know that 76% of Venezuela s income over the last 18 years has been devoted to social investment and that will continue to increase. There is no economic attack or illegal sanctions that prevent President Maduro from continuing to develop policies to guarantee the social rights of our compatriots. We are concerned, however, with the lack of clear sources of funding for other sister countries that have expressed their willingness to comply with the 2030 Agenda, but lack the necessary funds to do so. The UN must dedicate itself to guaranteeing this noble financing for the integral and sustainable development of all its member states. It may not be a coincidence that days before and during this 72nd session, the effects of the often-warned process of climate change have been demonstrated through devastation and death caused by the passage of consecutive hurricanes of magnitudes never before seen. This was not far from New York. The unusual fury of these natural phenomena affected our brothers and sisters from several Caribbean countries. The Prime Ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne and Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, gave two extraordinary speeches to this General Assembly in which they expressed with courage and sentiment the most absolute truths and warned of the need for concrete and urgent joint action to avoid greater havoc generated, unquestionably, by Climate 6 The Venezuelan people, are subject to permanent aggression by hegemonic powers, who seek to seize our natural resources: the world s 1 st oil reserve, one of the most important ones of gas, gold, diamond, coltan iron, aluminium, thorium, biological diversity, water resources, fertile lands, among others

7 From the house of multilateralism, we say long live multilateralism, from the space of international law, long live international law, from the home of peace, long live world peace Change. Roosevelt Skerrit said that these small countries are becoming the victims of a war they did not choose, that they did not start and that they are not part of. It is the war of the developed countries and the capitalist system against our Mother Nature. Today, the slogan of environmental and ecological social movements is stronger than ever: let us not change the climate, let us change the system. The restoration of physical infrastructure and the use of construction techniques resistant to the onslaught of new natural phenomena cannot fall on the affected countries and peoples, it is a shared and differentiated responsibility that must be assumed mainly by the countries that most pollute and contribute to climate change. In this context, and in the light of the evidence of the aftermath we have witnessed, it seems to us unheard of and hostile that the US Government, the main polluting country, intends to withdraw from the Paris Treaty, which, while not a panacea, is a collective step forward to mitigate the effects of climate change. How many hurricanes, typhoons, landslides, subsidence processes, droughts, how many deaths, how many injured, how many devastated countries are needed to determine that climate change, as the experts of the United Nations have said, threatens the whole planet and it is everyone s responsibility to reverse it? 7 The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela offers its condolences to the governments and families affected by the successive hurricanes in the Caribbean and the United States, as well as to the victims of the terrible earthquakes in our sister Mexico. While we have sought to deal immediately and with solidarity with the emergencies in our region, President Nicolás Maduro will continue to provide the necessary support, not only that which is within our reach, but also any one that we can help coordinate and direct to help our brothers and sisters of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Venezuelan people, as we said at the outset of our intervention, are subject to permanent aggression by hegemonic powers, who seek to seize our natural resources: the world s first oil reserve, one of the most important ones of gas, gold, diamond, coltan iron, aluminium, thorium, biological diversity, water resources, fertile lands, among others. We have suffered multifaceted attacks against our economy, our currency, our production capacity. The attacks have included the induced generation of internal political violence by political factors that have tried to come to power undemocratically since This year we suffered four months of political violence once again aimed at overthrowing President Maduro. After the tension and the pain for the unjustifiable deaths, the violence of the opposition was neutralized and appeased by the democratic and popular great demonstration of July 30, in which more than 8 million Venezuelans came to vote for Peace, to choose a citizen, sovereign and plenipotentiary National Constituent Assembly (NCA). The last acts of violence by the Venezuelan extremist right occurred precisely on July 30, to try to prevent the people from going to vote. Total political peace returned to the country from July 31, we witnessed the Constituent Peace. Our National Constituent Assembly, in coexistence and respect with the rest of the constituted powers, has become not only a peacemaker and protector of the people, but an ins-

8 trument par excellence for national dialogue and the legitimate attention to the most urgent problems of the country. Ours is an active and popular democracy. In Venezuela we have organized 22 electoral processes in 18 years. Of these, the Revolution has triumphed in 20 elections. We have always developed social dialogue as a method of deepening our democracy. That is why we also welcome the fact that the Venezuelan political opposition has decided to redirect itself through the path of democracy and the Constitution by all its parties participating in the elections of governors on October 15. As we celebrate that President Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic, former Presidents Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain and Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic, have taken and finalized the initiative of dialogue that President Maduro announced just after the installation of the NCA, and convened the parties to a process in which Nicaragua, Bolivia, Mexico and Chile have joined. We are grateful for the sincere support of these friendly countries and governments, in order to promote the only possible solution: peaceful, constitutional and sovereign, that is, built among Venezuelans. In these times of turmoil in the world, we want to see a United Nations, really united. Any reform process must go through the participation and inclusion of all its members. We need a UN that, as we said a few minutes ago, is really effective in neutralizing violent, hegemonic and unilateral initiatives. That is able to work together with all Member States, without hegemonic biases. A United Nations system that identifies and warns of the true causes of the great problems that humanity suffers today, and decides to attend to them without distractions, or pressures, always respecting the principles of our Charter. It is time for definitions, the historical struggle between healthy multilateralism and perverse unilateralism, is at its peak. Let us make decisions always thinking of the humblest, the excluded, those who most need us, in our mother nature. Let us be able to look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren, with the satisfaction of having stopped the worst and guaranteed a better future, peace, health and smiles. Let us build, from the United Nations, the Liberator asked us to design in 1815, that system of government that gives us the greatest amount of happiness possible, greatest sum of social security and greatest sum of political stability. From the house of multilateralism, we say long live multilateralism, from the space of international law, long live international law, from the home of peace, long live world peace. From the heart of Venezuela, count on the Bolivarian Government of President Nicolas Maduro, to close ranks around justice, humanism and peace. As the Liberator wrote to the then President of Peru, José de La Riva Agüero, on April 13, 1823, I am inclined to think that, if it is indispensable, LOVE to the HOMELAND, it will win. Likewise, we have the indispensable certainty that in any circumstance, love for sovereign, peaceful Bolivarian Venezuela, love for our working people, love for our good people, love for the Homeland will win, triumph, prevail. We will always win! Thank you very much. 8

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