The US has announced that it will withdraw the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, following his calls on US troops to defy his US counterpart, Donald Trump, during comments at a rally in New York.
The State Department labeled Petro’s remarks made at a pro-Palestinian street protest on Friday as “reckless and incendiary.”.
The Colombian president was in the US attending the UN General Assembly, where he, earlier this week, demanded a criminal investigation into the Trump administration’s airstrikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean.
He was already en route back to Bogota when the US said it would revoke his visa, according to Colombian media.
Petro posted on social media a video of him speaking to a large gathering using a megaphone in Spanish on Friday.
He urged the creation of a “world salvation army, whose first mission is freeing Palestine.”
“That is why, here in New York, I demand that all soldiers in the United States Army not raise their guns against humanity,” he said. “Disobey Trump’s command! Obey the command of humanity!”
Petro added: “As in the First World War, I want the youth, sons and daughters of farmers and workers, of both Israel and the United States, to aim their guns not at humanity, but at the tyrants and at the fascists.”
The US State Department severely condemned the comments, claiming he had “urged US troops to rebel against orders and use violence.”.
It was posted on social media that the cancellation of his visa was “attributable to his reckless and inflammatory conduct”.
Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti posted on X on Friday evening that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa ought to have been revoked instead of Petro’s.
“But since the empire safeguards him, it’s taking it out on the one and only president who was strong enough to tell him the truth to his face,” he added.
The relationship between Petro, the head of Colombia’s first-ever left-wing government, and the Trump administration has deteriorated in recent months.
The Colombian president employed his UN address as a vehicle to issue a scathing denunciation of US bombings of ships reputed to be involved in bringing drugs into the country, contending they were not aimed at monopolizing the drug trade but a response to a desire to employ “violence to dominate Colombia and Latin America.”.
He stated that some of the people murdered by the raids could have been from Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world, and accused US officials of being on the side of the drug cartels while his administration was encouraging farmers not to plant coca.
Petro compared the air strikes to an “act of tyranny” in a BBC interview.
Washington claims the actions are part of a US anti-drug mission off the coast of Venezuela, whose president it has accused of heading a cartel.
The US has also refused visas for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and 80 Palestinian officials, preventing them from attending the UN General Assembly, even though world leaders traditionally are allowed to visit the body’s headquarters irrespective of their status with the US.
