Venezuela condemns US military attacks on Caracas

Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment has con­demned what it de­scribed as Unit­ed States mil­i­tary at­tacks on Cara­cas and oth­er re­gions ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

In a state­ment is­sued by the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela said it “re­jects, re­pu­di­ates, and de­nounces be­fore the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion per­pe­trat­ed by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca against Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry and pop­u­la­tion”.

The state­ment said the at­tacks tar­get­ed civil­ian and mil­i­tary lo­ca­tions in Cara­cas, as well as the Venezue­lan states of Mi­ran­da, Aragua, and La Guaira.

Ac­cord­ing to the em­bassy, the ac­tion con­sti­tutes a vi­o­la­tion of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ar­ti­cles 1 and 2, which out­line re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty, the le­gal equal­i­ty of states, and the pro­hi­bi­tion of the use of force. It said the at­tacks threat­en in­ter­na­tion­al peace and sta­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, and place mil­lions of lives at risk.

Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment claimed the ob­jec­tive of the at­tacks was to seize the coun­try’s strate­gic re­sources, in­clud­ing oil and min­er­als, and to un­der­mine its po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence.

“They will not suc­ceed. Af­ter more than 200 years of in­de­pen­dence, the peo­ple and their le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment re­main stead­fast in de­fend­ing their sov­er­eign­ty and their in­alien­able right to de­cide their own des­tiny. The at­tempt to im­pose a colo­nial war to de­stroy the re­pub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment and force a ‘regime change’, in al­liance with the fas­cist oli­garchy, will fail like all pre­vi­ous at­tempts.”

The Bo­li­var­i­an Gov­ern­ment al­so called on so­cial and po­lit­i­cal forces with­in Venezuela to ac­ti­vate mo­bil­i­sa­tion plans and re­ject what it de­scribed as an “im­pe­ri­al­ist at­tack”.

“The peo­ple of Venezuela and their Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al Armed Forces, in per­fect pop­u­lar-mil­i­tary-po­lice fu­sion, are de­ployed to guar­an­tee sov­er­eign­ty and peace. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Bo­li­var­i­an Diplo­ma­cy of Peace will file the cor­re­spond­ing com­plaints with the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of that Unit­ed Na­tions, CELAC, and the Non-Aligned Move­ment (NAM), de­mand­ing the con­dem­na­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.”

The state­ment said Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro has or­dered the im­ple­men­ta­tion of all na­tion­al de­fence plans in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Or­gan­ic Law on States of Ex­cep­tion, and the Or­gan­ic Law on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

It said Maduro has signed a de­cree de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency across the na­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry “to pro­tect the rights of the pop­u­la­tion, the full func­tion­ing of re­pub­li­can in­sti­tu­tions, and to im­me­di­ate­ly move to armed strug­gle”.

The Gov­ern­ment said it has al­so or­dered the im­me­di­ate de­ploy­ment of the Com­mand for the Com­pre­hen­sive De­fence of the Na­tion and the Or­gans of Di­rec­tion for Com­pre­hen­sive De­fence in all states and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment said it re­serves the right to ex­er­cise le­git­i­mate de­fence un­der Ar­ti­cle 51 of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions to pro­tect its peo­ple, ter­ri­to­ry, and in­de­pen­dence.