June 9, 2024
Colombian President Gustavp Petro
“We are going to suspend coal exports to Israel until it stops the genocide,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro assured on Saturday on the platform X, where he also included the draft resolution that will take effect five days from its publication.
According to the draft decree, Colombia, the largest supplier of coal to Israel, took this decision in response to “serious human rights violations” committed by Israel during the last eight months of the war and the failure to comply with the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered the regime to immediately stop the offensive in Rafah, in southern Gaza.
“The escalation of military actions, the systematic non-compliance with the ICJ’s orders for provisional measures and the worsening of the humanitarian situation constitute a risk to international peace and security and, consequently, is a matter that affects national security,” the text of the decree adds.
The South American country, according to the initiative, evokes Article XX (a) of GATT 1994 to take the punitive measure against Israel, detailing that this allows member countries of the World Trade Organization to implement measures necessary to protect public morals. “For the Republic of Colombia, protecting public morality implies […] protecting human dignity, equality, democracy and the fulfillment of human rights,” it adds.
According to Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the Andean country exported 375 million dollars to Israel between January and August 2023, 93% of which corresponds to coal (thermal pullets and briquettes), which constitutes a strategic product “for the manufacture of weapons, the mobilization of troops, and the manufacture of supplies for military use operations”.
Colombia, which broke off diplomatic relations with the Zionist regime in May because of the genocide in Gaza, announced that it will prohibit coal sales “until the orders for provisional measures issued by the ICJ in the Process of the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Strip [South Africa v. Israel] are fully complied with”.
Since the start of Israel’s brutal campaign of aggression on Gaza last October, which has killed more than 36,800 Palestinian civilians, Bogota has demanded an immediate halt to the genocide and called for the prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his accomplices for war crimes.
Source: Hispantv translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English