Statement of the Global Pan African Movement (North American Chapter)

The Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) condemns in the strongest and most unequivocal terms the US bombing of Caracas as well as the attacks on Miranda, La Guaira and Aragua. We also express our outrage that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores have been kidnapped and removed from Venezuela by the US military and intelligence agencies, violating basic tenets of human decency, national and international law.

Africans and peoples of conscience everywhere will agree with the Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations who stated that, “This is a colonial war aimed at destroying our republican form of government, freely chosen by our people, and at imposing a puppet government that allows the plundering of our natural resources, including the world’s largest oil reserves.”[1]

This bombing and capture of the President of Venezuela reminds Global Africans of the 2011 invasion and destruction of Libya with the consequent destruction, violence and deaths over the past 14 years. Then the United States, France and Britain had sought the fig leaf of the UN Resolutions to legitimize their military actions. Under the present leadership of the United States, no such international legal cover is sought.

These attacks on the peoples of Venezuela constitute fragrant violations of several fundamental principles of international law, in particular Articles 1 and 2 of the UN Charter. Most seriously, they amount to a grave violation of Article 2(4), which requires States “to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. They constitute illegal aggression, which was considered the supreme international crime at Nuremberg. And they violate the right of the people of Venezuela to self-determination, which is guaranteed by Article 1(2) of the UN Charter.

There are many objectives in this military assault: 

Firstly, this is another effort to re establish white supremacy in Venezuela and in the Americas. The clear racist statements of the leadership of the United States against Columbia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela were designed to harness the support of the white racist constituency in the USA. It did not go unnoticed that in the press conference celebrating the attack on Venezuela, the President of the USA celebrated the racist attacks on the urban areas of the USA.

Secondly, these military operations against Nigeria and Venezuela serve to bind the authoritarianism of the USA to divert the attention of the citizens of the USA from the economic hardships being suffered under the present Trump regime.

Thirdly, the President of the USA has not been shy to argue that the struggle to control Venezuela is part of a global strategy to shore up the petro dollar international payment system.

Fourthly, the USA is not interested in the human and peoples rights of the Venezuelan Peoples. There has been no plan presented that clearly shows how the people of Venezuela will benefit from this illegal action, now or in the future. Suggestions that the US will "manage" the country for some foreseeable time further undermines the rights of Venezuela to rule itself.

Fifthly is the explicit objective of this military assault, the violent seizure of Venezuela’s strategic wealth, above all its oil and underground resources.

The confusion generated by the statements of the President of the United States, the Chairperson of the Joint Chief of Staff, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State reflects the confusion within the ruling circles of the USA. In particular, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio explicitly stated that the Peoples of Cuba and the destruction of their socialist experiment are the ultimate objectives of the current administration.

This push against the peoples of the Caribbean is being resisted. Inside Venezuela the mass of poor, especially the working peoples have vowed to deepen the principles of the Bolivarian Revolution. GPAM has been in touch with its internationalist counterparts who have vowed to defend their rights as humans and their rights to a decent livelihood free from racism and chauvinism. They also vow to defend their constitutional rights, their right to self determination and their right to self rule. They reject the return to the colonial and neo colonial relations of the Monroe doctrine.

The adventuristic probes to escalate military operations against Colombia, Cuba and Mexico is roundly condemned by GPAM. These probes are components of an unpopular regime in the USA to harness the support of the military and political forces in the USA when there is universal condemnation from within the USA of the war methods: economic strangulation, political destabilization, and open military force, all packaged under the fraudulent language of “regime change.” Efforts to cloak these actions under traditional legal concepts have failed to such an extent that "narco-terrorism" and "conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices for use against the United States" have been invented solely to justify this extrajudicial kidnapping.

Yet, even in this effort at regime change the divisions within the US ruling circles emerge when the President of the United States stated at the press conference that Maria Corina Machado ‘would not run Venezuela as she did not have the necessary support or respect in the country’. GPAM will also add that the Machado forces are prime agents of white supremacy within Venezuelan society. Now Donald Trump has revealed the hypocrisy that had inspired the award of the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’to María Corina Machado.

The attack on Venezuela comes one week after the attack on the peoples of Nigeria and West Africa. That act of aggression cannot be viewed in isolation. This act of aggression should also be viewed in light of a dozen instances in Africa alone where the Head of State was removed via US machinations. The United States is complicit with the United Arab Emirates and the reactionary military forces in Sudan in extending genocidal violence across the length and breadth of Sudan.

Alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the growing instability deliberately manufactured across entire regions by imperialist powers, it reflects the ongoing attempts to undermine and dismantle the self determination project of millions of peoples around the world.

GPAM agrees with the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres who said that the Trump administration was setting a “dangerous precedent” with its unilateral action inside Venezuela.

The selective application of law, the normalization of international crimes, and the systematic impunity enjoyed by imperialist states—led by the United States and its allies—have pushed global peace and security to the edge of catastrophe. It would be a serious miscarriage of justice to allow the United States to hypocritically indict a president for grave crimes by a president who is a convicted felon.

The Global Pan-African Movement (GPAM) is a revolutionary organization dedicated to the liberation, unification, and empowerment of Africa and Global Africans. We fight against colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, and all forms of oppression while advocating for reparative justice, gender equity, environmental repair, and the political and economic unification of Africa. Through education, advocacy, and mobilization, we connect struggles across the Pan African world—from the continent to the Americas, the Caribbean, and beyond. Our mission is to awaken collective consciousness, build people’s power, and transform systems of exploitation into structures of liberation.

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