Gustavo Petro challenges María Corina Machado over Netanyahu appeal: «How can a genocidal leader bring peace to Venezuela?»

Colombian President Gustavo Petro publicly challenged Venezuela’s newly minted Nobel Peace Prize laureate, María Corina Machado, after the opposition leader to Nicolás Maduro’s government called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene in Venezuela and help oust chavismo.

In an open letter posted to his social media accounts, the Colombian leader asked Machado: «Why do you seek help from a criminal against humanity, under an international arrest warrant, to bring democracy to Venezuela? (…) How can a genocidal leader help make peace in Venezuela?»

He argued that even under the pretext of cocaine trafficking — which, according to international research on the drug’s market, runs only marginally through Venezuela and is not produced there — that rationale has been used to militarize the Caribbean. He alleged that the same kinds of missiles seen in Gaza are now striking boats carrying Caribbean people — perhaps opportunistic but poor — killed without anyone asking their names or what they carried. Among those killed in the Caribbean, he added, are several Venezuelans and Colombians.

He then asked whether it would be better to back a broad Caribbean pact to permanently stop the transit of prohibited drugs through the region — within international law that forbids disproportionate force and guarantees the sovereignty of nations across the wider homeland of Bolívar and Martí, and the great Garifuna culture formed by Africans who chose to jump from Spanish, French and English ships rather than be enslaved. Thousands, he recalled, drowned but found freedom at sea. «Isn’t a peaceful Caribbean, free of killings and grounded in a strong anti–drug-trafficking policy without abuses of power, the better path?» his letter concluded.

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El Ciudadano