Chavez Throws Down the Guantlet to EU’s Racist Immigration Policy – Threatens to Cut Off Oil and Return Investments

Two hours ago President Hugo Chavez issued an unprecedented challenge to the European Union’s new anti-immigrant Return Directive.

He promised that no Venezuelan oil would be sent to any European country that applies the directive, and that if any Colombian, Bolivian, Paraguayan or other Latin American were to be locked up or deported under this directive, Venezuela would study what investments that country has in Venezuela and apply its own “return directive”.

We’ll return those investments, send them back, we don’t need them. Sitting next to Fernando Lugo, the progressive president-elect of Paraguay who is visiting Caracas, he called on all Latin American governments, whether left or right, to take joint action against this shameful European regulation.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales set this ball rolling a few days ago when he threatened some kind of reciprocal action against the ‘Directive of Shame’. Several other Latin American governments have expressed their opposition. But of course not in the same combative terms as Chavez.

The organisations and supporters of the FI should make this call their own and use it as fully a possible in as many countries as possible. A better issue for international solidarity and mobilization would be hard to imagine.

IB, Caracas