Venezuela Deserves Respect

Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES – Every country deserves respect, although there are some who don’t have any self-respect or respect for others and attack them or declare war, not caring how many innocent people might die as a result.

They all deserve respect, but countries who have decided to take up their Founding Fathers’ ideas and finish off what they fought for and had to leave incomplete, deserve even more still.

Two hundred years after our America gained its independence, the birthplace of Liberator Simon Bolivar, Venezuela, decided to move ahead with the project that the Independence hero could not bring to fruition, and this has annoyed those who wanted to appropriate this great country’s wealth for themselves.

The US government is taking measures which clearly forebode an armed attack against the Bolivarian nation, casting aside the UN Charter, which stipulates respect and non-interference in national matters.

They previously subjected Venezuela to an economic and media war, making the world see that this rich country is suffering a humanitarian crisis. They have tried to turn up the heat on Venezuela’s economic crisis and they have even stolen, yes, stolen (because there’s no other word to describe it), over 350 billion USD that the country had in assets abroad, including the CITGO company, which owns several oil refineries in the US and a vast network of gas stations.

Seizing Venezuela’s assets outside of its national borders is an international crime that needs to be punished. If it isn’t, then why do international laws exist, as well as the International Court of Justice? However, it seems that people who believe that they are the owners of this world, only know the law of survival of the fittest. They are stronger military powers, but when people decide to fight for their freedom and their rights, they are invincible. Remember Vietnam.

On Monday Feb. 18th, President Trump gave a speech at the University of Florida and attacked Venezuela, urging the Venezuelan Armed Forces to no longer obey President Nicolas Maduro’s orders and let the US army in under the pretext of providing humanitarian aid. However, he made it very clear in this same speech that his objective is to do away with socialism, especially in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. He didn’t say how, but he said that all the cards were on the table, including military intervention.

The Cuban government issued a statement under the headline: The Imperialist military adventure in Venezuela needs to stopped urgently. Here are two fragments:

“Political channels of communication and the media, including the US’ own, have revealed that extremist figures in this government, with a vast background in actions and lies directed at causing or encouraging wars, such as the US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the Head of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council, Mauricio Claver-Carone, with the participation of Florida’s Senator, Marco Rubio, have designed, found funding and directly organized, in detail, the coup attempt in Venezuela via the illegal self-proclamation of “president-interim” Guaido.

“They have been putting brutal pressure on a number of governments, directly or via the Department of State, to forcefully get their support for the arbitrary call for new presidential elections in Venezuela, while they continue to encourage recognition for the usurper who only had 97,000 votes as a member of parliament, compared to the over 6 million Venezuelans who reelected Constitutional President Nicolas Maduro Moros last May.”

The statement also says:

“History will harshly criticize a new Imperialist coup in the region and the complicity of those who irresponsably stand by it.

“The sovereignty and dignity of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Southern nations, is being decided today in Venezuela. The survival of International Law and the UN Charter is also being decided. The legitimacy of a government that comes from the explicit and sovereign will of its own people or one recognized by foreign powers is also being defined.”

Two US journalists, who have been in Venezuela recently, have spoken out on TV and said that there isn’t a humanitarian crisis in this country. It’s obvious that most of the Venezuelan people support their president, who was sworn in with 76% of the vote in elections that had many international witnesses who declared that it was a transparent process.

In the face of the seriousness of these events and the danger in our America of a similar situation being created that led to Vietnam, we have to call on all those of good will in this world to stand up to defend peace in the region, under the principle that Venezuela deserves respect.