Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (L) and First Lady Cilia Flores (R). Photo: EFE
In an unprecedented show of internationalist solidarity, dozens of progressive social movements and political parties issued a joint declaration demanding the immediate release of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
The signatory organizations described the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores carried out by U.S. forces as a flagrant violation of self-determination and international law.
The document stresses that the attack is not only against President Maduro as an individual, but against the autonomy of Venezuelan workers and popular sovereignty.
For the signatory movements — including groups from Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Colombia, and France — Washington’s action sets a dangerous precedent, which threatens the territorial integrity of all nations that resist imperial control over their resources.
The declaration lays out an 11-point roadmap calling on the international community to organize pickets at U.S. embassies and to reject any attempt at regime change.
The signatories insist that true democracy is defended by allowing the Venezuelan people to determine their future without interference or bombings.
From an anti-colonial perspective, organizations such as the Front for a Pan-African Revolution (FRAPP) and Zambia’s Socialist Party denounced the use of unilateral coercive force as an archaic practice that generate instability and human suffering in the Global South.
The coalition of progressive forces also urged parliaments around the world to cut any military and security cooperation with the aggressors.
Using the hashtags “Hands Off Venezuela” and “Free Maduro,” the progressive movements have launched social media campaigns to expose imperial strategies aimed at seizing the Bolivarian nation’s strategic wealth.
Finally, the text reaffirms unwavering solidarity, warning that “an attack on one sovereign people is an attack on all.”
With this manifesto, progressive voices around the world unite in a single cry against interventionism, saying history will not forgive those who seek to bend the will of a free people through state terrorism and military occupation.
Reposted from TeleSUR English.