“We Will Never Surrender” â Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza Speaks
New York â More than 100 people filled The Peopleâs Forum in midtown Manhattan on April 25 to hear the truth about Venezuela. The main speaker was Venezuelaâs foreign minister, Jorge Alberto Arreaza Montserrat, who was introduced by The Peopleâs Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos.
The embattled countryâs top diplomat gave an inside view of U.S. imperialismâs campaign to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution and turn Venezuela back to being a Rockefeller-Big Oil colony.
Arreaza spoke of his two meetings with the war criminal Elliot Abrams, Trumpâs point person for overthrowing Venezuelaâs elected president, NicolĂĄs Maduro. Abrams ran death squads during Ronald Reaganâs dirty wars against Nicaragua and the freedom fighters in El Salvador.
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In the first meeting, Abrams arrogantly told Arreaza that Venezuelaâs government would be overthrown in a coup. Thatâs what the CIA did to Chileâs democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, on Sept. 11, 1973. Thousands were tortured to death in the years that followed.
In their second meeting, Abrams admitted that the coup hadnât happened but predicted Venezuela will be crushed by Washingtonâs economic blockade.
Sanctions vs. bone marrow patients
Arreaza told the audience that the Center for Economic and Policy Research had just released a report saying that at least 40,000 people in Venezuela have died because of the U.S. economic sanctions.
This report calls economic sanctions âcollective punishment.â Nazi war criminals were hanged in Nuremberg for similar crimes.
Venezuelan bank deposits containing billions of dollars and euros have been frozen from Portugal to Japan to CitiBank in New York. Tory Prime Minister Theresa May has seized more than a billion dollars worth of Venezuelaâs gold deposited in Britain.
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Including CITGO assets, the total amount stolen from Venezuela runs to $30 billion.
All this money could pay for needed food and medicines. Instead, many people are suffering and some are dying because of U.S. sanctions. The capitalist media then point to besieged Venezuela and call it a âfailure of socialism.â
The foreign minister described the plight of 26 Venezuelans undergoing bone marrow treatment in Italy. Because of the Bolivarian Revolution, people have a right to free medical care, including life-saving treatments in foreign medical centers.
But the money that was to pay the Italian hospital was frozen because of sanctions. The patients and their families are worried that they will be kicked out, and they will be left to die.
Venezuelaâs elected government is now trying to work with nongovernmental organizations to pay the bills.
Why doesnât the U.S. puppet Juan GuaidĂł, who claims to be Venezuelaâs president, intervene on these patientsâ behalf?
Making an offer they canât refuse
Hand-in-hand with U.S. sanctions is the diplomatic warfare being waged by Washington. Arreaza described how countries are threatened if they donât recognize GuaidĂł. Money from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is being used as bribes.
Despite these strong-arm tactics, of the 55 countries belonging to the African Union, only the reactionary Moroccan monarchy supports the phony GuaidĂł.
South Africaâs government, whose leaders overthrew apartheid, courageously defend Venezuelaâs elected government in the United Nations Security Council.
Samuel Moncada, Venezuelaâs ambassador to the U.N., also spoke. He and his staff havenât been paid for six months because of sanctions.
Moncada pointed out Washingtonâs hand in the electrical outages that have plagued Venezuelans. Florida Sen. Marco Rubioâs tweets betrayed foreknowledge of these outages.
The courageous activists defending Venezuelaâs Embassy in Washington, D.C., were skyped into the meeting.
Manolo De Los Santos announced that a meeting will be held on May 3 at The Peopleâs Forum to organize a U.S. Hands Off Venezuela committee.
Foreign Minister Arreaza finished his presentation by declaring, âVenezuela will never surrender!â
The very next day, the U.S. Treasury Department added the diplomat to its sanctions list.
Source URL: Struggle – La Lucha
