Intervention of
Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada
Before the United
Nations Security Council
UN Security Council meeting, April 10, 2019.
Mr. President.
Pence is misleading the United Nations. Yesterday the
Organization of American States (OAS) did not accept the
designation of a new representative of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela. What happened yesterday was that they accepted the
designation of a representative of the National Assembly, but it
is not clear what that person can do, as the OAS is an
Organization of States, represented by National Government, and
not of National Assemblies. This legal absurdity took place as a
result of the desires of Mr. Pence's government to carry out a
coup d'état in the OAS and another in Venezuela. As such, we
suggested that all parties become well-informed over what was
adopted yesterday in Washington. We warn that Mr. Pence's
government will try the same trick here, within the General
Assembly, and we trust that it will fail.
Mr. President.
Ambassador Samuel Moncada speaks at press
briefing at the UN, April 10,
2019.
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The humanitarian situation in Venezuela needs to be
resolved,
but if we err in the diagnosis, we will also err in the
treatment. The situation, as has been affirmed here, is the
result of human actions. But what has not been said is that these
actions are part of a plan for economic destruction designed by
the government of the United States and its ally, the United
Kingdom, with the goal of strangling the national economy,
causing maximum social suffering, eroding the capabilities of our
nation to sustain itself and, ultimately, to spark an implosion
that will allow for a foreign military intervention based on the
nefarious notion of the responsibility to protect, which has been
used as an excuse for colonial invasions of countries that have
oil.
This is a gigantic, inhumane experiment of
unconventional
warfare. A policy of calculated cruelty that violates human
rights on a massive scale, reaching the point of committing
crimes against humanity, all with the goal of justifying
pillaging and looting, imposing a local, subordinate government
and, in our case, using a racist ideology that arose over 200
years ago, when the United States was a slave-owning nation,
which today they promote in violation of international law. We
refer to the infamous Monroe Doctrine. Listen to their own
words.
On January 9, 2018, spokespersons from the State
Department
declared: "The pressure campaign is working And what we are
seeing is a total economic collapse in Venezuela. So our policy
is working, our strategy is working and we're going to keep
it."
On October 12, 2018, Ambassador William Brownfield said:
"We
must treat this as an agony, a tragedy that will continue until
it finally reaches an end ( ) and if we can do something to
accelerate it, we must do it, but we must do it understanding
that this is going to have an impact on millions of people who
are already having difficulties in finding food and medicines ( )
We cannot do this and pretend that it will not have an impact, we
have to make a hard decision, the desired end justifies this
severe punishment."
On March 7, 2019, Senator Marco Rubio stated that "Over
the
next few weeks, Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering
no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern
history."
On March 22, 2019, John Bolton noted, "It's sort of like
in
Star Wars when Darth Vader chokes someone, that's what we are
doing to the regime economically."
This is about deliberate economic destruction; it is the
systematic application of aggression with the use of financial
instruments, undue pressure, and the use of dominant market
positions to influence the banking sector, private businesses and
other nations that engage in legal trade with Venezuela,
including even U.N. agencies. All with the goal of isolating the
country from international trade and financial systems. If it
were true that the Venezuelan government is killing its people,
why would they need a massive wave of extortion to increase
suffering? The interest in a social implosion is not ours; it is
of those who wish to invade us.
It is a plan in which banks, insurance agencies and
ships are
used with a destructive power comparable to weapons of mass
destruction, but without having those responsible face justice
and without them suffering the moral sanctions they deserve. On
January 30, 2019, John Bolton said: "My advice to bankers,
brokers, traders, facilitators, and other businesses: don't deal
in gold, oil, or other Venezuelan commodities," while on March
29, 2019, Elliott Abrams said: "We impose our sanctions. What
does the regime do? The regime tries to figure out other ways to
get around them. It tries to find new customers. It tries to find
new sources of imports. So, what do we do? We watch carefully,
and we can see ships moving and we can see new contracts with new
companies, and when we do, we talk to shippers or we talk to
refiners or we talk to governments and we say you should not be
doing that. That's what we're doing."
A repugnant aspect of this criminal policy of mass
destruction
is that it is accompanied by theft and pillaging that has cost
our nation over $137 billion. While they deprive our people of
essential goods, provoking maximum suffering, they rob the
Venezuelan people of over one hundred billion dollars. The
profits from our refineries are used to pay debts to oil
companies friendly to the Trump administration. Its friends with
Venezuelan sovereign debt bonds receive special licenses to
collect their profits from money stolen from our people. They
announced a plan to put the country into debt by $70 billion and
to use that money to pay for non-certified debts in suspicious
financial dealings. We cannot forget that the Bank of England,
which stole $1.2 billion in old from our people using the excuses
that they do not recognize President Nicolás Maduro and that
they
are complying with the Trump sanctions. The Bank of England is
not an independent institution, as its government affirms; rather
it acts as the enforcement arm of policies of conquest and
pillage of the governments of Trump and Theresa May. It is the
same colonial policy of the British Empire of over 200 years
ago.
Mr. President.
This is the true cause of the Venezuelan situation;
there is
no other. Certainly, our people our suffering and our government,
as the Secretary General can certify, is working intensely with
the United Nations system to increase both the number of
cooperation projects as well as the volume and capacities of
those projects, particularly in the health, food, education,
electricity and transportation sectors. The same is happening
with regards to cooperation with the International Committee of
the Red Cross, whose president met yesterday in Caracas with our
Head of State to move forward with a direct mechanism that
facilitates true neutral, impartial and independent aid. The same
can be said of friendly countries who have provided assistance in
peace and in respect for our sovereignty.
Anti-imperialist march in Caracas, Venezuela, March 30, 2019.
An element that can not be underestimated by those who
wage
war on Venezuela is the strength of our national spirit, which is
growing in the midst of these difficulties. The macabre
experiment of destruction is aiming to prove that economic crime
does work, that peoples can be broken and will surrender in the
face of an oppressive foreign power. However, they got it wrong
in Venezuela. The induced collective suffering is being resisted
with the growing organization of our people. Our National
Bolivarian Armed Force has not fractured and is more united than
ever. Our workers are reacting to the attacks against our vital
infrastructure with a discipline that the aggressors had never
seen. Yes, there are troubles, but they are not leading to a
civil war. Today, our people are setting an example for the world
on how to fight for peace.
It would be logical to think that the efforts of our
government to overcome the difficulties caused by aggression
would be recognized and supported by the international community
interested in alleviating suffering. However, what we are
witnessing is a new wave of economic extortion that severs our
country's financial flows abroad and impedes action by the United
Nation's own agencies, which at this time have not found a way to
receive our money and process the purchases required to meet the
needs of our population. Do you know why? Because the Trump
administration is waging a terror campaign against commercial and
financial agents that touch Venezuelan money. What the United
States has attempted to do so far is not humanitarian aid, but a
covert operation without the consent of Venezuela, violating our
territorial integrity, with a continuous threat of the use of
force, and openly inciting a military uprising and civil war.
This is Mr. Abrams' specialty.
Mr. President.
This Security Council, according to the provisions of
Articles
24, 34 and 39 of the Charter, has the responsibility to maintain
international peace and security and to determine the existence
of threats to peace or acts of aggression. As such, we request
that it determine:
The legal basis on which the United States and United
Kingdom
apply a program of economic destruction on Venezuela, without the
express authorization of this Council.
The legal authority to apply the so-called secondary
sanctions
on countries that legally trade with Venezuela.
The legal basis on which the United States threatens
Venezuela
with the use of force.
The legal authority on which the United States and
United
Kingdom can appropriate our riches, making profits through
extortion with the mass violation of the human rights of our
people.
The legal basis on which the United States can intervene
in
affairs that are essentially under the internal jurisdiction of
Venezuela.
To conclude, the diagnosis for the current situation is
the
result of a campaign of aggression by the United States and
United Kingdom. The treatment cannot be a new dose of aggressive
interventionism with a humanitarian façade. The solution is not
found in donations from those criminals who wish to portray
themselves as saviors; it is not in corridors of humanitarian aid
designed to provoke armed conflicts; it is not in Donor
Conferences that obscure the looting of our nation. The treatment
is in returning the money stolen from Venezuela; in the end of
the commercial and financial blockade of our people; in the end
of the sabotage to our infrastructure through covert operations;
in the end of threats of military intervention; and in the end of
threats against Venezuelans who wish to engage in dialogue. We
must stop Trump's war. This Security Council must fulfill its
mission, guaranteeing Venezuela its right to peace.
Thank you.
Right to reply to the address by the delegation of Peru
to the
United Nations on the issue of Venezuelan refugees and
migrants:
Even when they are surprisingly ignored by reports
referred to
here in this session, including those drafted by U.N. agencies,
the criminal, unilateral sanctions have also resulted in an
irrefutable increase in the migratory flow of Venezuelans,
although we differ on the number mentioned here, considering that
there has been a lack of due rigorousness in the methods to
acquire such information, nor the timely and verifiable provision
of migration data by receiving country.
We should note, fortunately, that Venezuela has not been
a
recent victim of either a natural catastrophe or an armed
conflict. The migration that we see today in the region, which is
encouraged by extremist statements and by a psychological war
that instills terror regarding the certainty of the future in
Venezuela with the goal of weakening the morale of our people, is
of an economic kind and is the direct result of a plan for the
programmatic destruction of our economy.
We cannot allow a human right like freedom of movement
to be
securitized or politicized. On the country, this very Security
Council would be engaging in a double standard in not promptly
convening a session on the humanitarian and security crisis on
the border, as declared by Trump on March 15, 2019.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number
13 - April 13, 2019
Article Link:
Intervention
of
Venezuelan
Ambassador
Samuel Moncada Before
the United Nations Security Council
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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