US to revoke Colombian president’s visa over feedback at pro-Palestinian gathering

The USA stated it will revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he took to New York’s streets on Friday in a pro-Palestinian demonstration and urged U.S. troopers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders.

“We are going to revoke Petro’s visa as a result of his reckless and incendiary actions,” the State Division posted on X.

Petro, addressing a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outdoors the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, referred to as for a worldwide armed drive with the precedence to liberate Palestinians, including, “This drive must be larger than that of america.”

“That is why from right here, from New York, I ask all of the troopers of the military of america to not level their weapons at folks. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro stated in Spanish.

Reuters couldn’t instantly verify whether or not Petro was nonetheless in New York.

His workplace and Colombia’s overseas ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

The Trump administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices whereas international locations together with France, Britain, Australia and Canada have acknowledged a Palestinian state – strikes which have angered Israel and its ally the U.S.

Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a vocal opponent of Israel’s warfare in Gaza, hit out at Trump in his speech to the U.N. Normal Meeting on Tuesday, saying the U.S. chief was “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and calling for “legal proceedings” over U.S. missile assaults on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the meeting on Friday, denounced Western international locations for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”

Israel started its assault on Gaza after an assault led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 folks, with 251 taken hostage.

Since then, Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza has killed greater than 65,000 Palestinians, in keeping with Gaza well being authorities, and displaced the complete inhabitants of the slender enclave.

A number of rights consultants say this quantities to genocide, a cost angrily denied by Israel, which says the warfare is in self-defense.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the U.N. by video on Thursday after the Trump administration stated it will not give him a visa to journey to New York.

Abbas’ workplace stated on the time that his visa ban violated the 1947 U.N. headquarters settlement, below which the U.S. is mostly required to permit entry for overseas diplomats to the U.N. Nevertheless, Washington has stated it could actually deny visas for safety, extremism and overseas coverage causes.

The USA is Colombia’s primary buying and selling accomplice and its biggest ally within the combat in opposition to drug trafficking, however U.S.-Colombia relations received off to a nasty begin shortly after Trump returned to workplace in January, when Petro refused to simply accept navy flights carrying deportees in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Petro stated his nation’s residents had been being handled like criminals. However he rapidly reversed course, agreeing to simply accept the migrants, after each international locations threatened tariffs on one another and after the U.S. canceled visa appointments for Colombians.

Trump this month put Colombia on an inventory of nations that Washington says have did not uphold their counter-narcotics agreements, blaming Colombia’s political management.

Petro got here to workplace in 2022 promising agreements with armed teams however pivoted final yr, pledging to tame coca-growing areas with large social and navy intervention. The technique has introduced little success.