Joining in the celebration of April 19th, the World Action Day in Solidarity with Venezuela, the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation (CPPC) salutes the Bolivarian Revolution and the Venezuelan people, and in particular our sister organization the Committee of International Solidarity from Venezuela (COSI).

In this occasion we divulge the position bellow cosigned by a number of Portuguese organizations in “Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution and the Venezuelan People”, that will be presented today in a public meeting to the Venezuelan Embassy in Portugal.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its people continue to be a priority target, with the country being subject to a vast manoeuvre of external and internal destabilisation.

Misinformation campaigns in the mainstream international media try to disregard undeniable advances and popular achievements in the political, economic, social and cultural fields obtained in the last 18 years, despite the difficulties and negative effects presently felt by the Venezuelan economy, resulting largely from the decline in oil prices and the global economic crisis.

The same internal retrograde forces that, in 2002, staged the coup d'état to remove President Hugo Chávez and overthrow the constitutional order born of the new 1999 Bolivarian Constitution, today continue to align with US interests and objectives and its policy of interference and destabilisation, promoting economic boycott, currency speculation, sabotage and disorganisation of services and supply chains, in what is rightly identified as a true economic war against Venezuela.

All means are acceptable to undermine the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government, and the policies they have implemented in favour of the workers and the people, which have removed thousands of people from social exclusion and falsely portray an internationally isolated Venezuela.

In a cynical manoeuvre of distortion and inversion of reality, the new US Administration maintains Obama’s executive order that unacceptably considers Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the "national security and foreign policy of the United States," and as such maintains the sanctions and military threats against this South American country.

The Organization of American States (OAS) and its Secretary General Almagro, in line with a history of collusion with the most basic violations of sovereignty, democracy and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, call for direct interference through the instrumentalization of the so-called Inter-American Democratic Charter against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela – an interventionist manoeuvre against a sovereign State which is supported by the Venezuelan parliamentary opposition.

In these circumstances, there is a need for a widespread denunciation and repudiation of such acts and aims against a sovereign State and people.

Hence, recognising the seriousness of the destabilising purposes that undermine the sovereignty and independence of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in a context of increasing interference and threats to the rights of peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the aim of restoring US hegemony and neoliberal order in this region, the subscribing organisations:

- Express their solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan workers and people, underlining the importance of its emancipatory path of great struggles and actions of popular mobilisation, of enormous significance for the sovereign and progressive changes and advances achieved in recent years in Latin America and Caribbean;

- Repudiate the constant attempts of the forces opposed to social progress to subvert the Bolivarian constitutional order and overthrow the legitimate Government of Venezuela and call for the unmasking of the manoeuvres of destabilisation and of the ongoing misinformation campaign;

- Reaffirm the right of the Venezuelan people to sovereignly decide their destiny in peace and free from any external interference and pressure.

Subscribing organisations:

-CPPC – Conselho Português para a Paz e Cooperação

-CGTP-IN - Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses – Intersindical Nacional

-MDM - Movimento Democrático de Mulheres

-AAPC - Associação de Amizade Portugal-Cuba

-FNSTFPS - Federação Nacional de Sindicatos de Trabalhadores em Funções Públicas e Sociais

-JCP – Juventude Comunista Portuguesa

-STEFFAS – Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Civis das Forças Armadas, Estabelecimentos Fabris e Empresas de Defesa

-STIHTRSN – Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Indústria de Hotelaria, Turismo, Restaurantes e Similares do Norte

-Associação Água Pública

-FESAHT – Federação dos Sindicatos de Agricultura, Alimentação, Bebidas, Hotelaria e Turismo de Portugal

-USL/CGTP-IN - União dos Sindicatos de Lisboa

-FIEQUIMETAL - Federação Intersindical das Indústrias Metalúrgicas, Químicas, Eléctricas, Farmacêutica, Celulose, Papel, Gráfica, Imprensa, Energia e Minas

-USNA/CGTP-IN – União dos Sindicatos do Norte Alentejano

-STML – Sindicato dos Trabalhadores do Município de Lisboa

-CPQTC – Confederação Portuguesa dos Quadros Técnicos e Científicos

-Mó de Vida – Cooperativa

-Ecolojovem - «Os Verdes»

-CESP - Sindicato dos Trabalhadores do Comércio, Escritórios e Serviços de Portugal

-FEPCES - Federação Portuguesa dos Sindicatos do Comércio, Escritórios e Serviços