International Academic Statement Against US Bombing of Venezuela and Kidnapping of President Maduro

More than 420 researchers and scholars globally have signed a statement denouncing the U.S. attacks on January 3 and calling for reparations for Venezuela.

We, the undersigned scholars, students, and academic workers, unequivocally condemn the Trump administration’s January 3 strikes against Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. The attacks are a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter by a US president claiming, “I don’t need international law.” 

The unilateral act of aggression is the culmination of a quarter-century of US hybrid warfare targeting the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, first under President Hugo Chávez and subsequently under Maduro. This regime change campaign has included draconian economic sanctions, repeated coup attempts, financing of anti-government NGOs, and corporate media disinformation.

As the Trump administration has evidenced in its invocation of the Monroe Doctrine and brazen threats against other left-led countries in the region, the egregious onslaught on Venezuela’s sovereignty constitutes an unprecedented kinetic escalation of Washington’s crusade to shore up its declining imperial hegemony across the hemisphere and around the globe. It moreover poses a serious menace to the regime of political sovereignty that was the lasting achievement of the Bandung era of national liberation, threatening to generalize across Latin America and the Caribbean the state dismemberment and semi-colonization visited upon Iraq, Haiti, DRC, Libya, Sudan, and Syria over the past three decades. Together with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, these wars of encroachment waged by the West represent an existential danger to humanity. 

As such, we the undersigned demand the following: 

1. The immediate release and repatriation of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

2. The immediate and unconditional lifting of all US unilateral coercive measures against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its officials, and associated entities; the return of all pilfered Venezuelan state assets, including CITGO.

3. The immediate withdrawal of all US military assets and bases from the region, as consistent with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’ (CELAC) 2014 declaration of the Americas a “zone of peace.” 

4. The payment of reparations to Venezuela for the destruction inflicted in the January 3 strikes as well as for the economic losses caused by US sanctions over the last decade; the UN General Assembly should appoint an independent commission of economists to calculate the total dollar amount owed to the Venezuelan state. 

5. The end of the US blockade against Cuba and payment of reparations likewise to be assessed by an independent UNGA-appointed commission.

   
   

As of January 16, 420 researchers and scholars have signed the statement. To see the full list go to: international-statement.pdf