Petro also led a Hague Group meeting in New York, where states pledged to block arms, cut contracts, divest, and impose an embargo on Israel’s energy
News Desk - The Cradle
Petro had joined demonstrators near the UN, where he spoke through a megaphone and urged resistance to US policy, saying “I ask all soldiers in the United States army not to point their rifles at humanity. Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!”
He also called on “nations of the world” to contribute troops for an army “larger than that of the United States.”
Upon his arrival in Colombia on Saturday, Petro responded to his visa revocation stating: “Humanity must be free everywhere. We have the human right to live on this planet. I am free, and every human being must be free on Earth.”
During his speech at the UN General Assembly, Petro condemned illegal US strikes on small boats in the Caribbean, demanding a criminal investigation, saying the attacks killed more than a dozen “poor young people,” some of whom were believed to be Colombian.
Trump has since dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, the largest deployment in years.
Relations between the US and Colombia have soured under Petro, the country’s first leftist president. The White House last week removed the country from its list of allies in the fight against drugs, but stopped short of issuing sanctions.
Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti responded on X that US authorities should have revoked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa instead of Petro’s.
“But since the empire protects him,” Benedetti said, “it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face.”
Controversy also arose when Petro co-chaired a Hague Group ministerial alongside South Africa during the General Assembly.
Thirty-four states joined the session, pledging coordinated legal, diplomatic, and economic steps to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The bloc outlined eight enforcement measures, including blocking weapons shipments, banning military procurement from Israel, divesting public funds from complicit companies, and instituting an energy embargo.
Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio and South Africa’s Ronald Lamola closed the meeting, warning, “The choice before every government is clear: complicity or compliance. History will judge us not by the speeches we delivered, but by the actions we took.”
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