In a statement released in this capital, the political and academic forum made up of progressive politicians and experts considered that the northern administration engages in expulsions in degrading and stigmatizing conditions that ignore legal obligations signed by that country, such as the 1951 Refugee Statute, which guarantees human rights such as work, education and the free movement of citizens.
“Latin America and the Caribbean cannot become a zone where migration is instrumentalized in favor of anachronistic nationalisms,” the document noted.
The Group also condemned the unilateral sanctions against Colombia announced by President Donald Trump, with the evident purpose of showing an “exemplary” case to the nations of the region “that do not stand in solidarity with the xenophobic and illegal policy that has been carried out against Latin American migrants, persecuting them as criminals.”
This last statement makes reference to the tensions unleashed between the New Granadian country and the US administration, after the refusal of the first of two military flights with deportees from the northern territory.
According to the president, Gustavo Petro, the refusal responded to what he considered to be inhumane treatment towards migrants and for which he later made the presidential plane available to guarantee a dignified return to the homeland of his compatriots.
The Puebla Group also called on the progressive voices of the region to work together to avoid the regressive content of the new US foreign policy summarized in the phrase of President Trump: “The United States does not need Latin America.”
He added that he supports the convening of a Presidential Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to reaffirm the rejection of the inhuman and illegal treatment of Latin American migrants and the imperialist pretensions regarding the Panama Canal and Canada.
He also considered that it is necessary for this organization to express its rejection of the use of unilateral economic sanctions to impose ideological conditions, the renunciation of commitments related to climate change and the measures against the sovereignty of Latin America and the Caribbean for reasons of domestic security of the United States.
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