The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has been defending the rights of the Embassy Protection Collective made up of U.S. peace and anti-war activists, including activists from CodePink, Popular Resistance, the ANSWER Coalition and many people who have come from across the U.S. to protect the embassy from illegal seizure. The Collective is lawfully present inside Venezuelan Embassy and were invited in and given access. They are protecting it from unlawful seizure by the Trump Administration.
For weeks many have been staying inside the embassy defending international law and the Vienna Convention – which holds that embassies are inviolable and may not be seized by host countries. They are standing up for human rights and democracy – unlike war criminal Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump who are threatening to unleash another U.S. war in Latin America.
For days, federal and local law enforcement officers have witnessed, allowed and facilitated repeated acts of violence against persons and property to be carried out by the right wing mob against peace activists This is a illegal government effort to force the peace activists out because they are lawfully present and they have not been legally divested of their right to remain on premises.
The PCJF has formally notified federal and local law enforcement by letter of officers’ civil rights violations and has made clear that persons present inside are lawfully present and that any officials who order, or officers who carry out, illegal arrests of collective members will be held accountable.
Click below to watch a video of PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard at the scene.
Legal counsel Mara Verheyden-Hilliard outlines how law enforcement is violating domestic AND international law. PLEASE SHARE! pic.twitter.com/eVmvgiahYE
— Eleanor Goldfield (@RadicalEleanor) May 2, 2019