The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, responded Saturday to the United States that the revocation of his visa, announced Friday by the State Department, violates international law and the rules of diplomatic immunity and therefore considers that the UN headquarters cannot remain in New York.
“What the US government is doing with me, breaks all the rules of immunity on which the functioning of the United Nations and its General Assembly is based. There is total immunity for presidents attending the Assembly and the US government cannot condition the opinion of the US (sic),” Petro wrote in his X account.
According to Petro, “the fact that the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has not been allowed to enter” the United States to address the eightieth session of the UN General Assembly, and “the fact that my visa was taken away for asking the US and Israeli army not to support genocide (…) show that the US government no longer complies with international law.”
“The United Nations headquarters cannot continue in New York,” added the president upon his return to Colombia, where he said: “I arrived in Bogota and I find that I no longer have a visa to the United States.
The U.S. State Department announced Friday night that it is withdrawing Petro’s visa for urging U.S. soldiers “to disobey orders and incite violence” during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to address the United Nations.
“This morning, Colombian President Gustavo Petro addressed U.S. soldiers on a New York street urging them to disobey orders and incite violence. For these reckless and provocative actions, we will revoke Petro’s visa,” the State Department said last night in X.
According to Petro, the revocation of his U.S. visa does not matter to him because he does not need it since he also has Italian citizenship and can travel with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which waives the visa.
“I don’t need a visa but an ESTA, because I am not only a Colombian citizen but a European citizen, and I really consider myself a free person in the world,” the president added.
The granting of the ESTA, however, is not automatic for citizens of visa-exempt countries and is also subject to approval by the U.S. authorities.
Following the withdrawal of the U.S. visa, Colombian politicians and businessmen asked Petro to responsibly manage relations with the United States, the Andean country’s main trading partner and also its greatest ally in terms of security and defense.
In the mid-1990s, reported Agencia EFE, the United States also revoked the visa of then Colombian President Ernesto Samper after he was accused of receiving money from drug traffickers for his 1994 election campaign.
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