SACP warns US against threats to Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia

THE SACP has accused the US of leading efforts to destabilise the region following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and threats to Cuba and Colombia. 

The communist party, along with several civil society groups marched to the US embassy in Pretoria on Thursday demanding Maduro and Flores’s release, saying the two are being held in the US on trumped-up charges. 

SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila said the US invasion of Venezuela was out of keeping with the United Nations Charter's Article1 and 2, which uphold international law, respect for other countries' national sovereignty and independence.

“We are here to condemn the US aggression against Venezuela and the democratically elected President of Venezuela Nicola Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. We are saying we want their immediate release.”

“It (US) is bullying everybody and this is not accepted and it has now threatened Cuba and we want to stand in solidarity with the people of Cuba. We would want to tell them to be strong. They have been strong for more than 60 years against US aggression and atrocious sanctions imposed on Cuba just because Cuba is practising a different political and economic system from that of the United States,” Mapaila said.

He said the US's capture of  Venezuela oil tanker with a Russian flag was a direct violation and provocation. 

“The United States is the main destabiliser of world peace,” he said.

“Hands Off Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Greenland. The US must play a role for peace in the world rather than becoming the destabiliser that it is today,” he said.

Mzwandile Mukhuane from the Socialist Party of Azania expressed his party’s solidarity with the struggle of the Venezuelan people and called for the US to get its hands off Venezuela. 

“The Venezuelan people have the right of sovereignty. They are independent. They have a right to say who must govern them. They don’t want a hand to intervene and tell them what to do. We know that the US imperialism is there for the oil extraction and for their multi-corporation,” he said.

Mukhuane said that failure by the US to release Madura and his wife will see the party mobilising for more people to join protests against the US.

Muhammed Desai from the South Africa Latin America Association said: “The United States seems to think that it is a gangster state that can ignore all understandings of the multipolarity and multilateral world. And thirdly, we are here because we identify with the people of Venezuela. These are the people who are resilient. These are the people that uplifted their people from unemployment, from poverty, from lack of education. These are the people that we want to create a better world with.”

Desai said the protest marked the first public outrage in South Africa since the US military invasion of Venezuela.

“We are expecting many more protests in the coming days and the coming weeks,” he said.

Cape Times