Venezuela condemns Trump’s threat as illegal and hostile

Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment has de­nounced threats by the Unit­ed States to close its air­space.

Yes­ter­day, Cara­cas con­demned what it de­scribed as a “colo­nial­ist threat” af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­leased in­for­ma­tion an­nounc­ing that Venezue­lan air­space was blocked, a move Venezuela said amount­ed to an at­tempt to “give or­ders and threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty of the na­tion­al air­space.”

Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil is­sued a state­ment in­sist­ing that “this type of de­c­la­ra­tion con­sti­tutes a hos­tile, uni­lat­er­al and ar­bi­trary act, in­com­pat­i­ble with the most ba­sic prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

The state­ment fur­ther ar­gued that the US pro­nounce­ment rep­re­sents “an ex­plic­it threat of the use of force, clear­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly pro­hib­it­ed by Ar­ti­cle 2, para­graph 4, of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

Venezuela al­so de­mand­ed re­spect for its air­space, say­ing it is pro­tect­ed un­der the rules of the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) and reaf­firmed in the Chica­go Con­ven­tion of 1944, which states that “states have ab­solute sov­er­eign­ty over the air­space that cov­ers their ter­ri­to­ry.”

Pres­i­dent Trump has de­clared that the air­space above and sur­round­ing Venezuela is to be closed “in its en­tire­ty” as ten­sions be­tween both coun­tries es­ca­late.

“To all Air­lines, Pi­lots, Drug Deal­ers, and Hu­man Traf­fick­ers, please con­sid­er THE AIR­SPACE ABOVE AND SUR­ROUND­ING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS EN­TIRE­TY,” he wrote on his Truth So­cial plat­form.

On Thanks­giv­ing Day last Thurs­day, Trump al­so warned that he would soon be­gin tar­get­ing Venezue­lan drug traf­fick­ing “by land.”

T&T’s Min­istry of De­fence is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing con­firm­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­space re­mains open to all com­mer­cial air­craft.

On Thurs­day, Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez ac­cused the Unit­ed States of pres­sur­ing oth­er coun­tries to pre­vent their air­lines from fly­ing to Venezuela. Her re­marks come amid a sharp re­duc­tion in air con­nec­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion of more than 30 in­ter­na­tion­al flights af­ter an alert is­sued by Wash­ing­ton.

Speak­ing dur­ing the XIX Rus­sia–Venezuela High-Lev­el In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Com­mis­sion, held vir­tu­al­ly, Ro­dríguez said the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion was at­tempt­ing to “iso­late” the coun­try amid the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean Sea.

“Once again, the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment is pres­sur­ing oth­er coun­tries be­cause it be­lieves it can iso­late Venezuela. They are pres­sur­ing us to pre­vent air­lines from fly­ing to our ter­ri­to­ry,” she said in re­marks broad­cast on Vene­zolana de Tele­visión.