It’s published
The US said it would cancel Colombian President Gustavo Peter’s visa after asking soldiers to violate President Donald Trump’s orders at a Palestinian demonstration in New York on Friday.
Comments have come as Colombian leaders visit the city to attend the high-level week of the UN General Assembly and are scheduled to close on Saturday.
In a post on X, the US State Department said that President Peter “stalked on NYC Street and urged US soldiers to incite violence against orders. He will revoke Peter’s visa for his reckless burning action.”
Speaking in Spanish with many protesters campaigning for the Palestinians amid almost two years of attack in Gaza, Peter called for the establishment of a global army “larger than that of the United States” with the priority of “liberating the Palestinians.”
“That’s why we ask all the American soldiers from New York to point their guns at people. We don’t follow Trump’s orders. We’ll follow humanity’s orders.”
Local media reports say the President of Colombia was already on his way to his country’s capital, Bogota, when the State Department announced its visa expiration Friday night.
Previously, Petro shared a video about his X-profile with protesters in megaphone, where he called for a continued stance towards what is being unfolded in Gaza, called the genocide.
Figures released by Gaza’s Health Ministry show that Colombian leaders are opposed to Israeli acts of war in Gaza, approaching the second year mark where at least 65,659 Palestinians were killed.
In his UN speech to this week’s General Assembly, Peter targeted US leaders on Tuesday, calling him “conspiracy with Genocide.”
The country’s Home Minister Armando Benedetti denounced Washington for revoking Peter’s visa, and in the X post, the action was politically motivated and called the President of Colombia “on the dare to denounce the massacre against Palestine in UN.”
Benedetti also accused the US of protecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and suggested that his visa should be revoked instead.
“But they protect Netanyahu. Peter dared to convey the truth to the faces of the United States and the world,” Benedetti said.
Petro has been in conflict with his US counterparts several times since Trump returned to his oval office on January 20th. Earlier this year, Petro accused Trump of treating Colombians like criminals.
He also refused to accept Colombians who were banished by Trump’s immigration attacks, but has since agreed to reverse the course and accept immigrants.
Recently, he denounced Trump’s attacks in the Pacific for saying the White House is a “drug ship” and called for “criminal lawsuits” against those attacks.
