KARACHI: The National Trade Union Federation Pakistan (NTUF) and the Home Based Women Workers Federation Pakistan (HBWWFP), along with other organisations, have staged a protest demonstration against the ongoing armed aggression of the United States against Venezuela.
The demonstration expressed solidarity with the anti-imperialist resistance of the Venezuelan people and strongly condemned what participants described as US war hysteria.
During the protest, participants carried Venezuelan flags and portraits of Latin America’s revolutionary leader, Hugo Chávez, and the abducted President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
Addressing the gathering, NTUF General Secretary Nasir Mansoor said that Donald Trump had imposed a “criminal war on Venezuela after the genocide in Gaza”.
He termed it shameful and blatant terrorism that the president of a sovereign country had been abducted by force simply because he raised his voice against US domination in the region and used the country’s oil and gas revenues for the welfare of the masses.
He added that the working people of Pakistan express unwavering solidarity with the people of Venezuela, who are defending their sovereignty and their right to determine their own political and economic path.
Renowned progressive intellectual Dr Asghar Dashti stated that Trump’s war against the people of Venezuela was an attempt to impose a US-backed colonial order.
Speaking on the occasion, Comrade Zahra Khan, General Secretary of the HBWWFP, said that the war was the latest chapter in the “bloody” history of US intervention in Latin America.
A labour leader further said that from Guatemala to Chile and from Grenada to Panama, US imperialism, under the so-called “Monroe Doctrine,” since 1823 had treated Latin America as its “personal backyard.”
The participants stated that Pakistan’s rulers should feel ashamed for nominating Trump — whom they described as a war-monger involved in heinous crimes such as the abduction of a president — for the Nobel Peace Prize, and should apologise to the people.
The gathering demanded that Trump be tried in the International Court of Justice for imposing war on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and for the abduction of the president of a sovereign country.
It demanded the immediate release of the abducted Maduro and his wife.
