Statement denounces invasion as pattern of imperialist violence, connects to historical enslavement of Africans
Editor’s note: The following statement was issued January 3, 2026, by the Global Afrikan Congress (GAC), a Pan-African organization dedicated to the liberation and self-determination of African people worldwide. Founded in 2002 in Barbados and organized in 35 nations, the GAC describes itself as the largest Pan-African Black Nationalist group in the world. The organization operates as an umbrella network of grassroots organizations across Africa, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe, and holds consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The GAC emerged from the African-African Descendants Caucus, which played an instrumental role in getting the transatlantic slave trade declared “a crime against humanity” at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism.
The statement addresses both the U.S. military strikes on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, as well as the months-long campaign of U.S. military strikes on vessels in Caribbean and Pacific waters.
Prior to the January 3 invasion of Venezuela, the Trump administration conducted Operation Southern Spear, a series of military strikes beginning in September 2025 on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. According to reports compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America and documented in congressional testimony, at least 115 people were killed in these strikes through early January 2026. Legal experts have characterized these strikes as extrajudicial killings carried out without authorization or due process.
The statement’s reference to Trump pardoning a “drug-dealing President of Honduras” refers to Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in March 2024 of drug trafficking charges for facilitating the transport of over 400 tons of cocaine to the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Trump pardoned Hernández on December 1, 2025, and he was immediately released from federal prison. The pardon exposed the Trump administration’s stated justification for attacking Venezuela as based on drug trafficking allegations against President Maduro.
STATEMENT BY THE GLOBAL AFRIKAN CONGRESS Condemning U.S. Aggression Against Venezuela and Extrajudicial Killings in Caribbean Waters
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 3, 2026
The Global Afrikan Congress or GAC unequivocally condemns the Trump Administration’s unlawful invasion and military aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela earlier this morning, Saturday, January 3, 2026.
In this context, we energetically condemn the kidnapping of the President of the Bolivarian Republic, Nicholas Maduro and his wife, the First Lady of Venezuela as well as the multiple reported extrajudicial killings of innocent fishermen in the Caribbean Sea that preceded the cited violation of Venezuela’s sovereign territory!
We also specifically condemn Trump’s declaration that the “U.S. will now run the country” of Venezuela which is a confirmation of what we always suspected that U.S. imperialism wanted to destroy Venezuela’s nationalist revolution to steal Venezuela’s oil and other resources!
We also firmly believe that these actions constitute grave violations of United States domestic law, international law, and the fundamental principles of sovereignty, human rights, and the sanctity of life.
We in the GAC also believe that the Trump Administration’s conduct reflects a dangerous pattern of state terrorism carried out under the false pretext of “border security” and a deliberately broken U.S. immigration system.
The GAC also believes that in practice, this action against Venezuela and its government is not about drugs and democracy but is instead about stealing Venezuela’s oil and other resources. If Trump’s invasion of Venezuela was about drugs, Trump would not have pardoned the former drug dealing President of Honduras who was tried and imprisoned for his drug trafficking of over 400 tons of cocaine in the U.S. for 45 years by a U.S. court.
The GAC also believes that Trump’s action against Venezuela is partly about deflecting from his government’s manifest failures of his domestic agenda to provide affordable housing, groceries, health care for tens of millions of Americans as well as the President’s own implications in the Epstein files.
We also observe that the attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President and First Lady is consistent with Trump’s and the US empire’s war against people of color within the U.S. and beyond its borders.
We also believe that Trump’s actions against Venezuela also violate the U.S. Constitution, the War Powers Resolution, and binding international legal frameworks, including the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and customary international law prohibiting extrajudicial killings and acts of aggression against all sovereign peoples.
We in the GAC also raise concerns about the inevitable violations of human rights, the likely use of U.S. military aggression and the dehumanization of the people of Venezuela who will be resisting U.S. occupation of their country and in defense of their anti-imperialist revolution.
We also uncompromisingly condemn the silence—or complicity—of much of the international community in the face of these crimes. In this context, we specifically condemn the compromised non-position of CARICOM led by the U.S. lackey, the Jamaican Prime Minister, Andrew Holness who have said and done nothing in defense of Venezuelan sovereignty leading up to the violation of its territorial integrity and the kidnapping of its President and First Lady!
The GAC notes that the kidnapping of Venezuelan President, its First Lady and the theft of Venezuelan oil tankers, the violation of Caribbean and Latin American territorial waters are not isolated acts. They are part of a long continuum of imperialist violence that are not disconnected from the invasion of Africa and the systematic kidnapping of tens of millions of Africans, their enslavement, and centuries of colonial exploitation carried out for European and American imperial gains.
The Global Afrikan Congress affirms that the sovereignty of Venezuela, the Caribbean, and Latin America is not and will never be up for negotiation.
Here, we in the GAC also fully condemn U.S. imperialism under Trump and Rubio who are intent on remaking Latin America and the Caribbean as its geopolitical backyard. That’s what the attack on Venezuela’s nationalist revolution is largely about!
As such, we call upon regional governments, CARICOM, CELAC, the African Union, and the United Nations to break their silence and to act decisively to uphold international law and protect civilian life.
We further call upon the peoples of the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the global African diaspora to resist these criminal policies through principled, organized, and collective action—just as our ancestors resisted enslavement, colonial domination, and apartheid.
Our history teaches us that dignity, freedom, and self-determination are never granted by empire; they are claimed through unity, courage, and unwavering commitment to justice.
The Global Afrikan Congress stands in solidarity with the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and with all countries and peoples resisting imperial violence, racism, and terror.
We demand accountability, reparative justice, and an end to U.S. aggression in our region and across the world.
Respect sovereignty!
End imperial violence!
Defend Sovereignty, Peace, Life and Human Dignity!
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