Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro spoke out against a resolution calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to heighten sanctions on Venezuela for alleged “human rights abuses,” warning against rising "fascism" in the White House and Europe.
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The resolution, which calls on the Organization of American States, OAS, to suspend Venezuela, was unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. The House of Representatives is expected to review the bill in the coming weeks.
“In spite of U.S. aggressions, our people are united in saying ‘you must respect Venezuela,’” Maduro said Wednesday during a government summit in Cumana.
“We will never be anyone’s colony ever again.”
The resolution also calls on Trump to instruct federal agencies to hold Venezuelan officials accountable for alleged “violations of U.S. law.”
Moreover, it demands that the Bolivarian government decentralize its separation of powers while allowing the opposition-controlled National Assembly to pass legislation that opposes the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
Senators who drafted the controversial bill claim it’s intended to “strengthen the rule of law” while combating so-called “impunity and public corruption.” But for Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution, the proposed legislation is yet another example of U.S. hegemony in Latin America.
Speaking out against the bill and U.S. aggression against Venezuela, Maduro said he thinks things will get worse under Trump, whom he compared to German fascist leader Adolf Hitler. The Venezuelan head of state said Trump’s “racist and xenophobic” policies are “similar to those of Hitler and the fascists.”
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Maduro also said Trump’s “dangerous” political tendency is spreading across North America and Europe.
“I warn the whole world about the emergence of this dangerous segregationist, racist and xenophobic political current that threatens to attack the peoples of the world, to divide humanity more, and to create more wars around the world,” Maduro said, HispanTV reports.
“It’s a band of extremists who are taking over power in the most important countries of the so-called developed world ... which, like Hitler, creates the supremacy of the white European race over the rest of the peoples of the world. It's worrying.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. government added Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami to its list of “sanctioned” Venezuelan officials based on unsubstantiated drug trafficking allegations.
The targeting of El Aissami is part of the U.S. “regime change” policy toward Venezuela that goes back nearly two decades. It began shortly after the late President Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1998.