‘The end of humanity has begun’: Petro, in his speech at the UN General Assembly

On September 24, the speech of the President Gustavo Petro before the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN).

In his speech, the head of state spoke vehemently about several topics: the situation facing the Amazon rainforest and, in general, the climate crisis and its risks for human survival.

“Today things are worse than a year ago. Eleven million hectares of the Amazon rainforest have burned in just one month due to global warming. Scientists said that if the Amazon rainforest burned, we would reach the climatic point of no return, where human decisions to stop the collapse would no longer be innocuous. The end has begun.“, said the head of state.

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The president also spoke on the lack of attention from the world powers to the poorest, less industrialized and militarily weak countries.

“Those of us who do not have the power to destroy, those of us who have the power to sustain life on the planet, speak without much attention and often only to our own people. That is why they do not listen to us when we ask for the genocide in Gaza to stop, even though we are the majority of the world’s presidents and representatives of the majority of humanity, those countries do not listen to us.“, said.

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And he added: “In this room, a president’s ability to communicate depends on the number of dollars in his budget, the number of warplanes he has, and his country’s capacity to destroy humanity.“.

Petro, in the middle of his speech, He also mentioned the current war situation in the Middle East. and, according to him, the ineffectiveness of governments in this regard, more specifically, regarding the most recent bombings in which dozens of people lost their lives, including children.

“A year ago I called for a peace conference for Palestine, today we have 20,000 children killed and the presidents of the countries of human destruction laugh in these corridors. (…) The people of God are not the people of Israel or the United States, the chosen people of God are humanity, the children of Gaza. They are killing the chosen people of God.“, he mentioned.

Inequality

As in previous years, Petro attacked the free marketpointing out this time that it is “the maximization of death“and stressing that it is the richest 1% that is allowing”that bombs are dropped on women, the elderly and children of Gaza or Sudan, or that rebel countries that do not fit into their rule are economically blocked.“.

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“I can only tell the peoples of the world from the weak voice of a country without weapons of mass destruction, but beautiful for its natural and cultural diversity, the country of beauty and butterflies of all colors, that it is no longer the time of governments but the time of the people.“said Petro, who called for lifting “the flag of life or our towns will be filled with cemeteries as the pandemic showed us“.

And he spoke directly to the world’s top leaders: “I am no longer speaking to Biden, Macron, or Scholz, or Xi Jinping, or Putin. (…) It is up to humanity to fight, it is the people’s time. If governments could not and decided to play with senseless bombs and wars, harmless power games, then it is time to take the solution to humanity’s great problems into the hands of the people themselves.“.

PORTFOLIO
*With information from EFE