CNN- The United States announced it would cancel the visa of Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro on Friday, after he publicly called on its soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump, further straining relations between Washington and Bogota.
Petro, who has previously clashed with the Trump administration on migration and drug trafficking issues, repeated his call for an armed force to “free Palestine” while addressing a group of pro-Palestine supporters outside the United Nations headquarters on Friday.
“It (the global force) has to be bigger than that of the United States. That’s why from here, from New York, I ask all the soldiers of the army of the US not to point their rifles at humanity,” Petro is heard saying in a video posted to social media.
“Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” he added.
Afterwards, the US State Department said in a post on X: “Earlier today, Colombian president (Gustavo Petro) stood on a NYC street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence.
“We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
In response, Petro said the United States’ decision “breaks all the norms of immunity on which the functioning of the United Nations and its General Assembly is based.”
“The fact that the Palestinian Authority was not allowed entry and that my visa was revoked for asking the US and Israeli armies not to support a genocide, which is a crime against all humanity, demonstrates that the US government no longer complies with international law,” he posted on X.
Petro had been in New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, where he also took aim directly at Trump, saying he was “complicit in genocide” in Gaza, where US ally Israel has recently escalated an assault on Gaza City.
Last week an independent United Nations inquiry concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, an accusation Israel’s government has strongly denied.
CNN has reached out to the US State Department for more information.
Colombia’s Caracol Radio reported that Petro had already boarded a flight to leave the US when the State Department announced it would revoke his visa.
During his address at the UN, Petro also called for “criminal proceedings” over the deadly US strikes on suspected drug traffickers in international waters around South America.
Colombia’s president has had a rocky relationship with the White House this year. Just over a week into Trump’s second term, Petro blocked the landing of two US military flights of deported migrants, accusing the US of treating Colombian migrants like criminals. Colombia later agreed to accept the deportees and deployed its own planes to assist in their return.
The Andean country had previously been Washington’s most reliable ally in South America on national security and defense.
