Colombian president Gustavo Petro speaks throughout the Normal Debate of the United Nations Normal Meeting on the UN headquarters in New York Metropolis on September 23, 2025.
Leonardo Munoz | Afp | Getty Pictures
The US mentioned it will revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he took to New York’s streets on Friday in a pro-Palestinian demonstration and urged U.S. troopers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders.
“We’ll revoke Petro’s visa as a consequence of his reckless and incendiary actions,” the State Division posted on X.
Petro, addressing a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outdoors the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, referred to as for a world armed drive with the precedence to liberate Palestinians, including, “This drive must be larger than that of america.”
“That is why from right here, from New York, I ask all of the troopers of the military of america to not level their weapons at folks. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro mentioned in Spanish.
Reuters couldn’t instantly affirm whether or not Petro was nonetheless in New York.
His workplace and Colombia’s overseas ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
UN clashes over Gaza warfare
The Trump administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices whereas nations together with France, Britain, Australia and Canada have acknowledged a Palestinian state – strikes which have angered Israel and its ally the U.S.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a vocal opponent of Israel’s warfare in Gaza, hit out at Trump in his speech to the U.N. Normal Meeting on Tuesday, saying the U.S. chief was “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and calling for “felony proceedings” over U.S. missile assaults on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the meeting on Friday, denounced Western nations for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”
Israel started its assault on Gaza after an assault led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 folks, with 251 taken hostage.
Since then, Israel’s army marketing campaign in Gaza has killed greater than 65,000 Palestinians, in response to Gaza well being authorities, and displaced your complete inhabitants of the slim enclave.
A number of rights consultants say this quantities to genocide, a cost angrily denied by Israel, which says the warfare is in self-defense.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the U.N. by video on Thursday after the Trump administration mentioned it will not give him a visa to journey to New York.
Abbas’ workplace mentioned on the time that his visa ban violated the 1947 U.N. headquarters settlement, below which the U.S. is usually required to permit entry for overseas diplomats to the U.N. Nonetheless, Washington has mentioned it may well deny visas for safety, extremism and overseas coverage causes.
Colombia’s rocky begin with Trump
The US is Colombia’s primary buying and selling associate and its biggest ally within the struggle towards drug trafficking, however U.S.-Colombia relations obtained off to a nasty begin shortly after Trump returned to workplace in January, when Petro refused to just accept army flights carrying deportees in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Petro mentioned his nation’s residents have been being handled like criminals. However he rapidly reversed course, agreeing to just accept the migrants, after each nations threatened tariffs on one another and after the U.S. canceled visa appointments for Colombians.
Trump this month put Colombia on an inventory of nations that Washington says have didn’t uphold their counter-narcotics agreements, blaming Colombia’s political management.
Petro got here to workplace in 2022 promising agreements with armed teams however pivoted final yr, pledging to tame coca-growing areas with large social and army intervention. The technique has introduced little success.
