New York โ More than 100 people filled The Peopleโs Forum in midtown Manhattan on April 25 to hear the truth about Venezuela. The main speaker was Venezuelaโs foreign minister, Jorge Alberto Arreaza Montserrat, who was introduced by The Peopleโs Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos.
The embattled countryโs top diplomat gave an inside view of U.S. imperialismโs 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, Trumpโs point person for overthrowing Venezuelaโs elected president, Nicolรกs Maduro. Abrams ran death squads during Ronald Reaganโs dirty wars against Nicaragua and the freedom fighters in El Salvador.
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In the first meeting, Abrams arrogantly told Arreaza that Venezuelaโs government would be overthrown in a coup. Thatโs what the CIA did to Chileโs 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 hadnโt happened but predicted Venezuela will be crushed by Washingtonโs 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 โcollective punishment.โ 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 Venezuelaโs 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 โfailure of socialism.โ
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.
Venezuelaโs elected government is now trying to work with nongovernmental organizations to pay the bills.
Why doesnโt the U.S. puppet Juan Guaidรณ, who claims to be Venezuelaโs president, intervene on these patientsโ behalf?
Making an offer they canโt refuse
Hand-in-hand with U.S. sanctions is the diplomatic warfare being waged by Washington. Arreaza described how countries are threatened if they donโt recognize Guaidรณ. 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 Guaidรณ.
South Africaโs government, whose leaders overthrew apartheid, courageously defend Venezuelaโs elected government in the United Nations Security Council.
Samuel Moncada, Venezuelaโs ambassador to the U.N., also spoke. He and his staff havenโt been paid for six months because of sanctions.
Moncada pointed out Washingtonโs hand in the electrical outages that have plagued Venezuelans. Florida Sen. Marco Rubioโs tweets betrayed foreknowledge of these outages.
The courageous activists defending Venezuelaโs 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 Peopleโs Forum to organize a U.S. Hands Off Venezuela committee.
Foreign Minister Arreaza finished his presentation by declaring, โVenezuela will never surrender!โ
The very next day, the U.S. Treasury Department added the diplomat to its sanctions list.
Source URL: Struggle – La Lucha
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Tags: anti-imperialism resistance The People's Forum US Imperialism US Sanctions US Solidarity Victory
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