By Francisco Dominguez, VSC Secretary.
Trump has announced that US military forces deployed in the Caribbean Sea have carried out yet another extra-judicial killing against a fifth small boat near Venezuela’s coast, alleging, without providing a shred of evidence, that it was involved in drug-trafficking.
Worse, Trump said the US would change its maritime campaign against “drug traffickers” in the Caribbean stating at a public rally, “Now we’ll hunt them down on the ground.”
The threat here is clear – continuing the US military aggression inside Venezuelan territory itself.
Furthermore, Trump has declared the “US to be in armed conflict with drug cartels” and has threatened US military raids in Mexican and Colombian national territories.
Since, none of the cracks that the US predicted within the Venezuelan military have materialised during these illegal military deployments, now the US and its far-right Venezuelan accomplices seem to have decided to go for terrorism.
Venezuela’s National Assembly president, Jorge Rodriguez, reported that Caracas warned the US government that Venezuelan local extremists are planning to plant explosives at the (closed) US embassy in Caracas in a false flag operation. Rodriguez also alerted a European embassy of these reports, urging them to inform US diplomatic personnel of the seriousness of this information.
The key real facts of the situation are:
- The US is using monumental lies (between 87 and 92% of illegal drugs reach the US through the Pacific coast, reported even by the DEA; Venezuela’s entire coast lies in the Caribbean Sea) to justify a military deployment (including a nuclear submarine) in the Caribbean Sea, to combat alleged drug trafficking by Venezuela, threatening not only Venezuela, but the whole of Latin America.
- The UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) has repeatedly in its annual reports confirmed that nearly 90% of the drug (produced primarily in Colombia, and also Ecuador and Bolivia) reaches the US through the Pacific.
- The blowing up (thus far) of five small boats –which US forces could have easily captured, the alleged culprits detained and the evidence of their drug cargo exhibited – raises further suspicions that the real aim of the military deployment is not to curb “drug trafficking” but “regime change” instead. Thus far extra judicially killing 21 people, this is yet another US flagrant violation of international law.
- US actions in the Caribbean Sea grossly violate international law and the UN Charter with respect to countries’ national sovereignty – in the case of Venezuela it should be added in this category, the inflicting of over one thousand criminal sanctions.
It should, of course, never be forgotten that Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world.
These constant and dangerous military aggressions against Venezuela must stop.
We will join with forces across the British labour, peace and solidarity movements to express maximum opposition to US military aggression in the weeks and months ahead.