Anger outside Downing Street (Picture: Guy Smallman)
Some 2,000 people protested against the US attack on Venezuela on Monday evening outside Downing Street in London. The emergency demonstration was called by the Stop The War Coalition, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Vincent, who had recently joined Your Party, said, “It’s very important to me as a Mexican myself to stand up for countries like Venezuela that have been oppressed for decades.”
He told Socialist Worker, “The United States wants oil so they try to take it from countries that they think are weak and vulnerable.”
Alberto said, “I’m an African and we experienced colonialism and slavery. As Nelson Mandela said, ‘we are not free until all people of the world are free’.
“They bombed Nigeria, they are threatening Greenland. It’s the law of the jungle and we must stop it. It’s us or them. Socialism is the way out.
“The world failed Palestine, we can’t allow them to fail Venezuela”, he told Socialist Worker.
Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn told the crowd the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro is, “A violation of every single aspect of international law. Donald Trump is not interested in international law, he’s only interested in power.”
Stop The War convenor Lindsey German said, “The history of the US has been intervention in Latin America time and time again.”
Lindsey slammed the Labour prime minister. “What a scandal it is that Keir Starmer is frightened to say anything at all about this. He says he wants to find out more facts.
“We know the facts and we know what Trump has done. The truth is Starmer and the European Union leaders are appeasing Trump.”
Francisco Dominguez from the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign told the crowd, “Venezuela is guilty of having the largest reserves of oil in the world. That’s really what this is all about.
“For the first time ever the United States does not disguise their interventionism, brutality, colonialism and imperialism with talk of democracy, human rights and everything else that they used to do.”
Claudia Turbet-Delof from the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign had a defiant message for Starmer and Trump. She said, “They are killing our indigenous people, killing our campesinos, killing our social movements. For what? For our oil.
“We know that this is not about an intervention for democracy. You want our oil, you want our gas, you want our lithium and we are not going to allow that to happen.”
Protests also took place in Bristol, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere.
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