By Sept 27 (AfrikTimes) – The United States said on Friday it would revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders.
“We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” the State Department posted on X.
Petro, addressing a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outside the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, called for a global armed force with the priority to liberate Palestinians, adding, “This 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 United States not to point their guns at people. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro said in Spanish.
AfrikTimes could not immediately confirm whether Petro is still in New York. His office and Colombia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally at Columbia University in New York City on October 7, 2024, to mark one year since the outbreak of the genocidal war in Gaza.
UN CLASHES OVER GAZA WAR
The Trump administration has been cracking down against pro-Palestinian voices while countries including France, Britain, Australia and Canada have recognized a Palestinian state, moves that have angered Israel and its ally the United States.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a fierce critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, lashed out at Trump during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, accusing him of complicity in genocide in Gaza and calling for ‘criminal proceedings’ over U.S. missile strikes on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the assembly on Friday, denounced Western countries for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.
Israel began its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after an attack led by the Palestinian resistance group on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and took 251 as prisoners of war. Since then, Israel’s military aggression in Gaza has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and displaced the entire population of the narrow enclave.
Palestinians mourn their relatives, killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, during a mass funeral at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2023, amid the ongoing Israeli military onslaught in Gaza.
Multiple rights experts say this amounts to genocide, a charge angrily denied by Israel, which insists the war is an act of self-defense.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the U.N. by video on Thursday after the Trump administration denied him a visa to travel to New York. Abbas’ office said the ban violated the 1947 U.N. headquarters agreement, under which the U.S. is generally required to allow foreign diplomats access to the United Nations. However, Washington has said it can deny visas for reasons of security, extremism, or foreign policy.
COLOMBIA’S ROCKY START WITH TRUMP
U.S.-Colombia relations got off to a bad start shortly after Trump returned to office in January, when President Gustavo Petro refused to accept U.S. military flights carrying deportees as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Petro said his country’s citizens were being treated like criminals. But he reversed course, agreeing to accept the migrants, after both countries threatened tariffs on each other and after the U.S. canceled visa appointments for Colombian citizens.
Earlier this month, Trump placed Colombia on a list of countries Washington accuses of failing to meet counter-narcotics obligations.
Petro, who came to office in 2022 promising agreements with armed groups, pivoted last year toward a strategy of massive social and military intervention in coca-growing regions. The approach has so far yielded little success.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro addresses pro-Palestinian demonstrators, through a translator, accompanied by musician Roger Waters, at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza outside UN headquarters during the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York City September 26, 2025.
Petro was in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, where he sharply criticized the Trump administration and called for a criminal inquiry into recent U.S. strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean during his address on Tuesday.
He said unarmed “poor young people” were killed in the strikes—more than a dozen in total—though Washington maintains the operations were part of a U.S. anti-drug campaign off the coast of Venezuela, whose president it accuses of running a cartel.
Trump has deployed eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, marking the largest U.S. naval presence in the region in years and raising concerns in Venezuela about a possible invasion.
Petro, whose country is the world’s biggest cocaine producer, has said he suspects some of those killed in the US boat strikes were Colombian.
Last week, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs but stopped short of imposing economic sanctions.
A high-speed boat, initially believed to be carrying narcotics, was operating in international waters before being struck by a U.S. military missile on September 2, 2025. It was later reported to belong to struggling Venezuelan fishermen.
The South American country’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, wrote on X last night that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been revoked rather than Petro’s.
“But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face,” Benedetti added.
