Bogota, Aug 27 (EFE).- The President of Colombia announced Monday that his government has notified the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) of its decision to withdraw from the bloc as the South American organization failed to denounce Venezuela’s “brutal treatment” of its citizens.
“I want to inform the Colombians that today, with precise instructions, the Foreign Minister of the Republic sent Unasur the letter where we denounce the constituent treaty of that entity and in six months the withdrawal of Colombia from this organization will be effective”, President Ivan Duque told media.
The president said that the South American bloc, formed in Brazil in 2008, was created “to fracture the inter-American system” and pointed out that it served as a “joker” for “the purposes of a dictatorship.”
He added that Unasur “never” denounced the “abuses” committed by the government of President Nicolas Maduro against his people and that the bloc did not exercise its duty to guarantee that those actions did not “constitute the elimination of the freedom of the citizens”, and therefor Colombia considers Unasur the “greatest accomplice of the dictatorship of Venezuela.”
On Aug. 10, Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announced that the country took “the political decision” to withdraw from Unasur, a promise that Duque had already made during his presidential campaign.
According to Trujillo, Colombia was in “consultations” with other member countries such as Peru, Argentina and Chile to make a joint withdrawal from the organization.
“We will continue working within the framework of regional multilateralism and we will do so by supporting the inter-American democratic charter signed by Colombia, which defends freedoms and the balance of powers and is also the guarantor of a participatory and plural society,” Duque said on Monday.
Other Unasur countries include Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.