Photo:Juan Diego Cano - Presidency

​​"I did not want them to chain the Colombian migrants they caught on the streets, they treated them like dogs": President Petro

New York (USA), June 10, 2026

I thank the Secretary General for the information he has provided. As President of Colombia I agree with his words. I will now make a statement in my capacity as President of the Republic of Colombia.

I assume the role that corresponds to me about to finish. It has been said that I am going to remain in the Government outside the Colombian Constitution. It's not like that.

On the final day of my mandate I will go I don't know where, or to what, as a citizen and not as President of Colombia. So this is perhaps my last intervention in this scenario. There are already several in the United Nations.

Let's talk about security. I thank you for your words, Secretary General. And I am addressing you.

I've already posted a summary of what I'm going to talk about here. And it has to do with the use of new communication technologies in the hands of a very small group of people, but economically very powerful in the world. In my opinion, they have already caused a distortion between truth and lies. It is its first and perhaps the main effect. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is its latest development.

I am not an enemy of science or technology, which is applied science for reasons. There is no neutral technology, that does not exist. It depends on the reason why it is being built.

There are various technological paths in humanity, and the objectives that a technology can have are diverse. Not in itself, but depending on the political will of those who use it. And his economic will. The transformation of truth and lies into their opposite, mutually. Truths that become lies before public opinion, and lies that become truths.

The physicist Stephen Hawking, who recently died, spoke about something that can lead to the death of humanity. It is the climate crisis derived from the expansive consumption of hydrocarbons, from the industrial revolution to date. I was surprised that such a notable physicist, from the point of view of science, would announce these problems. No political party, no ideological current, but science itself.

There is a difference between science and ideology. Ideology is a falsification of reality, it has been said since the 19th century. But science is Diogenes' lantern.

Since the Greeks it has been thought that it is only science that can enlighten us, in the midst of the darkness of ignorance. Therefore, we must talk about two events, not just one, and I would like it to be the main agenda of the United Nations Security Council. I hope my country continues along those lines, it is about to choose its destiny.

The two events that can end humanity, depending on our decisions, are Artificial Intelligence (AI) in few hands, private and very powerful economically, and the widespread consumption of hydrocarbons out of greed. This has led to the humanitarian crisis of war, which you have described very well, Secretary General. It is the fight for hydrocarbons, which causes missiles to be launched on various towns, even on babies, with 20,000 murdered in Gaza.

This cannot be hidden behind economic or political interest, because we return to the Nazis. This is what is happening today, and extensively not only in Gaza, but in general terms in the war in the Middle East, but it increases with the existence of oil and with the existence of nuclear weapons, and it causes us the current situation, which we are trying to resolve with more missiles, with more war.

This situation has to do with an evasion of a policy, which should be the agenda of humanity, such as the decarbonization of the world. We then have two policies that could solve the most serious problems that affect the possibility of all existence, integral life on planet Earth. Depending on our decisions, Stephen Hawking gave humanity 200 years of existence. If we do the math now (he died earlier), time has already been cut to a century or less. Some of these models that are projected by the United Nations panel of experts expressed that, in the torrid zone, where my country is located, in 2070 there will be no water.

My children will live through that time, and all of your children and your grandchildren. If there is no water in the torrid zone, 3 billion people will go to where the water is, as humanity has done since it appeared, because it is their livelihood. This means, given the current circumstances of anti-immigration ideology, a global barbarism, which we are already seeing. To the extent that I want to go deeper into the topic and compare it with Belfast, I think it needs to be analyzed.

In the British kingdom, what prevails is no longer the struggle of republicans against monarchists, or the struggle of different historical origin between the Irish and the English, etc. That had a very long violent path, a great Irish singing star committed suicide, and many people died, children too, but it was solved through dialogue. But today Belfast is under fire, houses are burning, and the conflict is another, which we must analyze in depth, because it is no longer happening in Belfast, but on the entire planet.

The cause is racial hatred, although there are no races in the world. Race is a human production, and racism did not begin with the Nazis, but they took it to its worst expression, during World War II. Many countries present here helped defeat them, as States and peoples that resisted. Goebbels only predicted the manipulation of people, but today it occurs on a much higher scale, which he did not know: the capacity to manipulate the popular imagination and all of humanity. So, in my opinion, in Belfast they are suffering something similar to what Colombia and other countries, whose names I know well, suffered.

The power of artificial intelligence is behind the acts of violence in Belfast, and it is also behind the acts of violence in Colombia, in the midst of elections that so far have been one of the most peaceful in the history of my country. But I already see threats emerging. Today artificial intelligence is a private oligopoly and has produced competition between the United States and China. It is the so-called trade war, which is nothing more than a race for speed, speed, and computational capacity. It is the beginning of a new social and economic inequality, we are seeing it in the world. The capacity for development is located in those two countries and excludes the others; the very principle of competition is violated.

The climate crisis can end humanity, as Stephen Hawking said, but it can end sooner if we fail to separate reality from fiction, truth from lies. If Diogenes' lantern goes out, there is no full truth, and the lie becomes full. We are seeing it in the case of Belfast, I even perceived it myself yesterday, when I dared to post a tweet on network It was an internal discussion, seeing that a journalist who was previously liberal defended today a fascist idea that he defends today. And I answered him with the phrase Heil Hitler, without context, and it had 34 million views. At first I thought that all the Colombian people were watching the debate, although it was not possible. It had never happened to me before, the greatest expansion of a trill of mine was responding to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, at a difficult moment in the relationship between the two countries, and there were 10 million reactions. Where did the 34 million come from? It is practically the entire adult population of Colombia, but 40% of Colombians are not connected to that network.  The same thing happened with Belfast, a crime that has to be judged by justice, as happens in many other parts of the world, but which is translated into an ideology that expands the X network.

And I briefly explain what happened: there is a far-right British parliamentarian there, his name is Rupert Lowe, and he wrote yesterday about an attempted murder committed by a Somali. But it turned out that he is not a Somali (Somalia is present here), and he said that it was the fault of migration, so all migrants would be guilty. In other words, there we also fall into a criminal Nazi position, because Nazism is not an ideology, Nazism is not even that, Nazism is a crime. And it is a crime then to say that the migrants are to blame.

Didn't they say the same thing about the Jewish people in Europe? Guilt is collectivized in a human group, something that is individual, of a person. In Germany, some person of Jewish origin committed a crime, and then Goebbels and Hitler began to spread that individual guilt to the entire Jewish people, and in some way it was the origin of the Reichstag fire in Berlin. The Nazis produced it, but they said that it had been produced by Judeo-Bolsheviks, communists, in order to be able to put in prison the entire labor leadership of Germany, the entire German social democracy, the Socialist Workers Party, the communists, the gypsies and the Jews, finally.

It is regrettable that the people who helped us defeat Hitler are withdrawing from this stage at this time. I am on the OFAC list (or Clinton list) for my ideas. There is no need to be ashamed of having fought against the Nazis and having defeated them alongside other peoples of Europe.

Why do you feel sorry for them now? And they retire, why? If that should be your proudest flag, the fight for life and democracy. In Colombia we are seeing the same thing that happens in Belfast, there are people who come to beat activists who support this government. Neighbors of poor neighborhoods, they are poor looking to vote for those who have murdered them. Truths turned into lies, lies made true. Well-funded, hugely-funded mass artificial intelligence.

We are facing global violence that includes missiles thrown at babies and houses, wars abound in the world. And under this approach, the slogan “Enough is enough” arises, radiated by millions of people. Enough is referring to the attempted murder of a criminal, not of a people, not of the people of the third world for whom the British parliamentarian is calling for the death penalty.

Hear this: death penalty for migrants. And the owner of network X drives it. And faced with a death penalty proposal for migrants, what do we do? It is Hitler to a greater power, it is an anti-immigrant ideology, which has a political origin. Even though many may not like it, it is racist because it seeks to defend whiteness of skin, since there are no races in the world.

There are different ways to connect with the environment and nature. The brains are the same in men and women and in any skin color. Or from any origin from a specific region.

On the other hand, denying the science that exists on the issue of the climate crisis is leading us to barbarism, contrary to what this Security Council seeks. Israel, whose people suffered a holocaust at the hands of the Nazis, has withdrawn. And the United States is withdrawing, whose children of workers and peasants, by the millions, went to fight in Europe, in foreign countries, with a unanimous will, the fight for humanity.

We must pay honor to these people, but we must also recognize why today the truth is transformed into a lie. That is why I ask you to act on these two fronts: the one mentioned by Stephen Hawking, the climate crisis, and the issue of artificial intelligence.

The anti-immigration discourse today is much more powerful, and is embraced by majorities of voters in many countries, because it is expanded through artificial intelligence. That is, thanks to the manipulation of human consciousness, a practice carried out by a few individuals with a lot of power, linked to the same vision. The idea they promote is that the white race must be defended from a supposed aggression that seeks to exterminate it, they say. Which is not true, because the United Nations is proof that what we want here is for a global democracy to exist, for us to be able to dialogue between different civilizations.

And then I conclude. Artificial intelligence cannot be managed by five tiny interests of private individuals, whether they are Americans, Chinese or any nationality. It has to be regulated globally.

A part of the current of ideas to which I belong has requested it, and the Catholic Church now requests it through its spokesperson, Pope Leo XIV, in his encyclical Magnificent Humanity. How can we achieve human brotherhood, the original purpose of the United Nations, after a terrifying war that left 50 million dead in Europe? I then propose a way to address the main source of danger and insecurity, artificial intelligence, which expands the anti-immigrant discourse: it is through global and public regulation of artificial intelligence. International Treaty, International Law, rescue International Law from all attempts to destroy it.

If International Law ends, barbarism arrives. Lies become truth, which is what artificial intelligence does when poorly regulated by perverse interests, and that is why it has to be regulated publicly and democratically.

Manipulation, said the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, leads to a lack of communication, it is a way of creating violence. If social communication is manipulated, it leads to violence and barbarism. We must then talk about regulation, this is the request that I make on behalf of my martyred people, victims of violence, like so many other peoples in the third world.

Because the English parliamentarian says that the culprits are the migrants, because they are barbarians. How do they come up with it? A barbarian is he who denies the culture of others. The Romans managed to find, as Alexander the Great had already done, the idea of ​​a dialogue between civilizations. That's where it comes from, and it's a correct idea.

Dialogue between civilizations, not the rupture of dialogue that will lead us to barbarism, the end of democracy and the end of humanity. And this war is not won by the one who has more money or more rifles.

How is it possible that science is denied? The world agenda now is migration and the wars caused by the possession of oil, instead of addressing the urgent decarbonization of the world and the global and public regulation of artificial intelligence. These are the two basic points to achieve the brotherhood of humanity, that is, peace. The brotherhood of humanity is communication and respect.

Respect for science. If we forget this, we enter barbarism. And people here, in the Security Council itself, withdraw because they do not want to listen to the other. They refuse social communication. Jürgen Habermas said it when the Twin Towers fell here, any breakdown in social communication leads to violence.

Social justice is dialogue between different people, to reach agreement. Agree on migration, on the climate crisis, on war, on the impoverishment of economies as a result of greed.

Here you have a coffee on the corner, it costs maybe two dollars or more a cup, because it is next to this headquarters. But only ten cents goes to the Colombian coffee producer, or from other countries. This corresponds to social injustice in the world, something that can be easily solved. But if we don't talk, it won't be solved.

I spoke with the president of the United States recently in his office, and I found the conversation pleasant. At that moment I thought we had talked about an undeal, or something like that, not business. And so I left happy. But today I have the president of the United States supporting a candidate in Colombia, explicitly, thus breaking his own constitution.

And he says the same thing against the approaches of Pope Leo XIV. And not because of matters of religion, since everyone has the right to their beliefs, whatever they may be, including those of Islam. That is a principle of democracy, freedom of worship. And they are the ideas of a diverse humanity.

So, the issue is not to be fooled by an anti-immigration ideology, which is ultimately Nazi. I did not want the Colombian migrants they caught on the streets to be chained and treated like dogs, beaten. I opposed it, and that big problem was solved by talking.

My government paid for those flights, and that's how it was solved. Paying for dignity does not seem like a bad expense to me, because they did not arrive in Colombia in chains. That is why, talking, problems are solved.