February 18, 2023, 8:10 AM
February 18, 2023, 8:10 AM
The Peruvian Congress declared on Friday (02.17.2023) persona non grata to the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, in rejection of his statements against the National Police of Peru (PNP) and asked the authorities to guarantee that “it does not enter the national territory “.
The decision received 72 votes in favor, 29 against, and 7 abstentions from the plenary session. The motion that raised this measure referred to some statements that Petro made last Friday, when he mentioned the extensive deployment of the PNP in the historic center of Lima the day before, in response to an anti-government demonstration.
“In Peru, (the police) march like Nazis, against their own people, breaking the American Convention on Human Rights,” said the Colombian president.
Petro stressed that said convention “It does not apply only to left-wing governments”. “The one who does that is double standards. It applies to all governments and that is our position,” added the president.
The motion that raised this measure was approved last Tuesday by the Foreign Relations Commission, chaired by the conservative deputy María del Carmen Alva, who considered at that time that Petro’s expressions were “regrettable, really shameful.”
This Friday, Alva remarked before the plenary session that the Peruvian Congress is “defending the National Police,” after which he emphasized that “no one can offend them by saying that they are Nazi troops.”
He also asked to declare Petro persona non grata and urge the Interior and Foreign Affairs ministries to take “the necessary steps” to ensure that the Colombian president “does not enter the national territory.”
Last January, the Peruvian government expressed through a diplomatic letter its “strong protest against a new act of interference” by Petro in internal political affairs, after he ruled on the eviction of hundreds of protesters at a university in Lima.
