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The United States said it would revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he urged soldiers to disobey US President Donald Trump’s orders during a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York on Friday.
The comments came as the Colombian leader visited the city to participate in the UN General Assembly High-level week, set to close on Saturday.
The US Department of State said in a post on X that President Petro “stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
Petro, speaking in Spanish to a crowd of demonstrators campaigning for Palestinians amid Israel’s almost two year offensive on Gaza, called for a global armed force “bigger than that of the United States” to be established, with the priority of “liberating Palestinians”.
“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,” said Petro at the protest held outside the UN headquarters in Manhattan.
According to local media reports, the Colombian president was already en route to his country’s capital, Bogota, on Friday night when the State Department announced his visa’s revocation.
Earlier, Petro shared a video on his X profile of him addressing protesters with a megaphone, in which he called for a continued stance against what he called a genocide unfolding in Gaza.
The Colombian leader has been vocal against Israel’s conduct of war in Gaza, nearing its two year mark, in which at least 65,659 Palestinians were killed, according to figures published by Gaza’s Health Ministry.
In his UN address to the General Assembly this week, Petro targeted the US leader on Tuesday, calling him “complicit in genocide”.
The country’s Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, slammed Washington for revoking Petro’s visa, and in a post on X, said the action was politically motivated, calling the Colombian president one of the few who “dared to denounce the genocide against Palestine at the UN”.
Benedetti also accused the US of protecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, instead suggesting that his visa should be revoked.
“But they protect Netanyahu. Petro dared to tell the truth to the face of the United States and the world,” said Benedetti.
Petro has been at odds with his US counterpart on several occasions since Trump returned to the Oval Office on 20 January. Earlier this year, Petro accused Trump of treating Colombians like criminals as the new US administration looked to crackdown on illegal migration.
He also refused to accept Colombian citizens expelled by Trump’s immigration raids, but has since reversed course, agreeing to accept the migrants.
More recently, he denounced Trump’s attacks in the Pacific against what the White House says are “drug boats”, calling for “criminal proceedings” over those attacks, which he says may have killed Colombians.