Boric at the UN General Assembly
At the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations, the President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, addressed the latent political conflicts in the world and the need to establish a cross-cutting commitment to respect human rights. In this, he condemned the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and called for recognizing the victory of the Venezuelan opposition in the presidential elections of July 28th.
«Chile is especially attentive to the critical situation in Venezuela. We are facing a dictatorship that intends to steal an election, that persecutes its opponents and that is indifferent to the exile of not thousands, but millions of its citizens.Boric said.
He added: “A political solution is required to this crisis that recognize the opposition’s victory in the last elections and carry out a peaceful transition to a formal democracy.”
“I have a duty to say that the unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States, as I have personally told President Biden, do not help to resolve the conflict, but on the contrary aggravate it,” he said.
He asserted that “the economic sanctions hit the Venezuelan people more than their current rulers, they hit the humble, the workers, because the political crisis is combined with the economic crisis.” And together these have forced more than 7 million – listen carefully – 7 million into exile, to leave their country, of which nearly 800,000 are in Chile.
“Out of responsibility, I must be clear on this point: Chile is not in a position to receive more migration. United States authorities, I call on you to lift the economic sanctions that we in the south know only cause more poverty in the towns and not in the dictators,” said the president.
The Chilean head of state called on the assembly: “As a young Latin American and left-wing president, I say loud and clear that human rights must always be respected everywhere, and we must demand this respect regardless of the political color of the dictator or president in power who violates them.”
“The Palestinian teenager murdered in Gaza, the Venezuelan worker forced to migrate from his homeland, the Ukrainian child kidnapped by Russia, the dissident silenced in Nicaragua or the woman expelled from school in Afghanistan simply for being a woman, are first and foremost human beings, and the voice of all nations, regardless of their political position, must be raised to defend them,” he added.
And he stated: “That is the position of principles beyond any geopolitical interest that we defend from Chile. That is why I refuse to choose Hamas’ terrorism or the massacre and genocidal conduct of Netanyahu’s Israel. We do not have to choose between barbarism. I choose humanity.”
Bachelet
Another element of Boric’s speech was a nod to a possible candidacy of Michelle Bachelet for the post of UN secretary general. In polls, the former Chilean president has emerged as one of the favourites to lead the multilateral platform.
Pointing to the challenges facing the UN, the president said: “I have no doubt that it is the possible leadership of a woman, as indicated in the agreement of the future convention that we signed this morning, who comes from our great America according to the criterion of territorial rotation of the UN, who will be able to lead this process following the reformist path of António Guterres.”
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