The Duran Podcast - Gonzalo Lira Sr., 'Free my son'

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Gonzalo Lira Sr., 'Free my son'

All right, Alexander, we are here with Gonzalo Lira Sr., joining us from Chile. Gonzalo, Sr. How are you doing today? Thank you for the introduction and the pleasure of being with you, Alex and Alexander. I can imagine not too well having my son in a Ukrainian dungeon. We will talk about that in this video. So, Alexander, I'm going to allow you to ask questions of Gonzalo Senior. And we'll go for about 20, 30 minutes in this recording. And let's talk about everything that's going on with your son, Gonzalo Lira.

Alexander, I am passing it off to you. Thank you, Alex. Well, first of all, I should say also thank you to Gonzalo Senior. we are very privileged and honored to have you on our program. It's very important, I think, that everybody who watches and follows our programs remembers Gonzalo, who is in the dungeon in Chile, sorry, in Ukraine, not Chile, the Ukraine that Gonzali Syria, Sr. was talking about. Gonzalo is somebody who's appeared many times on our programs.

We've had wonderful, valuable interaction with him. And it is important to remember always that the reason he is in prison in Ukraine is because he went onto YouTube, said things which were opinion points and points that carried an awful lot of truth. He was exercising in other words his rights as a citizen of the United States, as a free person, to express his views and state his opinions. things he did on an American platform protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. And the United States government is under a duty and an obligation to help Gonzalo in this plight. And yet nonetheless, despite that, despite the fact that Ukraine has these obligations to the United States, despite the fact that the United States exercises so much influence in Ukraine, Gonzalo is still in that Ukrainian dungeon.

He is in that dungeon, but he is not forgotten. We all hear speak for him. And as I said, we are very privileged to have Gonzalo Senior to speak for him today. Now, Gonzalo, I think you have something you wanted to read for us about your son. and perhaps you could start by telling us that and perhaps reading it. Yes, Alexander. In seeing the hearing, the last hearing my son had to help, if he will, the Ukrainian government, and I quote from the December 21st hearing,

has accused him of committing crimes against peace, human security and international legal order. This is under Article 436-2 and 3. Due to the brutal prison condition in which they have my son, he got double pneumonia as well as neural thorax. This is a life-threatening clinical condition which requires emergency treatment in a hospital.

He did not make the court appearance because of the state of his health. And it only came to light the bad state of his health because he couldn't

attend the hearing as I said December 22nd. His physical aspect was awful. His face had a bluish-purple color which is typical of having severe lack of oxygen in his body. Despite his state and having a so-called medical doctoring court, the court ruled that he should go back and continue at the prison ward.

In so far as the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, they finally answered my letter dated December 29th. I have sent many, many letters that have been unanswered. This time, they answered, a very diplomatic answer, that they would be keeping in touch with Gonzalo. We are keeping in touch with Gonzalo via video conferences. If this is true, why did they become aware of the critical state of health only because he could not attend the December court hearing.

He became ill in mid-October. Two months before the court hearing, either the embassy is lying or Gonzalo cannot speak to them, but in his voice. And he kept coughing constantly. Anybody would have identified that that person was ill. I want the government the world to know

that the government of a dictator in Ukraine has done to my son Victor Zerkhovny the defense attorney last Thursday the 4th of January went to jail and was told that

Gonzalo had been taken urgently to a hospital less than two weeks after his video appearance in that court. My son gave Victor, his defense attorney, a letter to his sister that I would like to read to you. I have double pneumonia as well as feurnal-morrhoic thorax,

plus a severe case of edema, swelling of the body. All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison. They only admitted that I had pneumonia at a December hearing. He had double pneumonia. His lungs had fallen. It's a very serious clinical case. I'm about to have a procedure to reduce the edema pressure in my lungs, which is causing me extreme shortness of breath to the point of passing out after minimal activity.

or even just talking for two minutes. That's all he said to his sister, Maria Elena, my daughter. Numerothorax is a life-training clinical condition which require emergency treatment. This occurs, among other causes, from heavy blows to the breast bone. Gonzalo accused the jailers when he attempted to cross the border to Hungary

as you may recall he placed three videos and in those videos he said that he had been tortured while in prison and I suspect that that torture is still going on the US embassy through video conferences my dear friends Alex and Alexander

will never know the physical state a prisoner may be. We'll never know the real state of conditions he is in that prison because the jailers are right next to him and he will only be able to communicate what the jailers want you to hear.

They're very naive, the U.S. Embassy. Finally, and this is unbelievable, after six months in jail, incommunicado. The judge authorized Gonzalo to speak to his sister. It has been impossible because the prison warden told the defense lawyer, the system is out of order.

Almost two months have passed and the system is still out of order. What has the embassy done? The U.S. Embassy in Kiev finally began contacting my son around September. This is after more than five months in jail. The contact was through video conference. This is not enough. How naive, as I said before, can they be?

This is not a common criminal case. This is a political accusation from a dictator. How can the world stand for this? How can the USA continue giving support to Ukraine, military as well as cash? And don't forget, cash. If this is the kind of help, the State Department provides to its citizens, on the other hand, spending billions of dollars in Ukraine, fight a lost war. Is this the kind of America, the founding fathers and presidents like Eisenhower had in mind?

Are we so ignorant that we still believe in the dominant? Is Biden governing for the military industry, like so many are saying? In recent days, the U.S. stands globally isolated. in its support of Israel's genocidal actions against the Palestinians. This is plain cruelty. Against human being for expressing its different points of view, Gonzalo was communicated the truth of what's going on in this war? Is it because on March the year 2022,

a month after the invasion of Ukraine, he predicted that Ukraine, with all the help of the USA and NATO, could never win a war against Russia and Europe. Is it because Gonzalo stated that the financial sanctions against Russia would brought that fire to the USA? Is Gonzalo so important that merits to be in prison? many, many are saying that one court from the USA

would have Gonzalo released. How can the USA give more than $100 billion to this dictator that has destroyed his own country? How can Biden keep insisting

that we're defending democracy while he's destroying Ukraine? Old Salensky had to do to prevent the invasion was an assurance to Putin that Ukraine would not enter NATO. Wasn't that what President Kennedy did in 1962? My dear friends, the world has to open their eyes. We cannot have governments like Biden in the USA, and that dictator Zelensky, in poor of Ukraine.

He has destroyed his own country all he needed. When Putin was asking, do not enter NATO, I won't enter them. It's easier not to enter the NATO than destroy my own country

for crying out loud. I mean, how stupid can you be that you can get into a war with Russia? Russia from many, many, many years ago has been arming themselves ever since they were the Union Soviet Union. Now that they broke the Union

and they also broke the force of pact why didn't we break NATO at that time and shake hands and stop the stupidity of the Domino theory, so kind of loud. The USA has no business in this world,

but let alone helping somebody like Zelensky, who was placed by the CIA as a president of Ukraine. Nobody wins an election with that high percentage vote. Come on. I'm 81. I'm no stupid. Please, give me your opinion, because I need your help.

You are the ones that people here, the people watch. Help me out. Defend my son. He's not a bad man. He just is a victim of circumstances of living in Ukraine because he has two children that live in Ukraine. And that's the only reason he kept living in Ukraine. I don't want those poor and little children.

Come on is 10. I'm sorry. Veronica's 10. I haven't even seen them. And the boy is seven. They leave them. They spent the first Christmas without their father. Show me humanity, Selensky.

Show me humanity, Biden. Please, free my son. Is he that important? If he continues his language, leave him alone. What is he going to cause you? He's no Russian agent. Come on, that is the biggest stupidity that I've heard. I've heard so many things in the internet about what's silent,

and many of them are wrong, absolutely wrong. He's never been a fan of Russia, believe me. What he was saying was reasoning. Russia is a country, is a nation that has been invaded. Read history. The last invasion was bloody. The German Nazis invaded Russia in 1942.

Cause millions of people dead in Russia. they don't want to be invaded again, having NATO surrounding them, just like President Kennedy did in Cuba, October 1962. Please have some sense. What is the world going into? We've had enough wars. The USA has sloughed every single war they've been getting into. Eisenhower,

told the American public in his last speech before handing the presidency to John Kennedy when he said that he was worried about the industrial industry in the USA, the growth. Let us not become a nation, exporting armaments, and that's precisely what the USA is doing. You know, in my life, in your life, in the winter of my life, I've been able to see the transition. of two empires. One dying and the other one living, coming by birth. China is the big empire presently. The USA is a country that is only selling ominous and that's evil. I'm no Chinese fan. I'm no Russian fan. I loved and I still love the American person. population, but I cannot stand. My heart, it has always been in the USA.

I live many years in the States, because when I graduate, Chile had President Allende and then had the dictator Pinotche. I'm against both of them. I'm in the center. I want peace for the world, and I stayed in the USA. My two children were born in the USA. my son Gonzalo, my daughter Maria Elena, presently because of his, her husband,

living in the USA in North Carolina for the next two years. But all I ask is for the world and the leaders of this world do not continue with massacring innocent people. What is going on in Gaza has no excuse. It's genocidal.

It's something that, The Jewish population suffered during the Second World War, and they're doing the same to the Palestinian. Please, have mercy on your fellow man. This cannot continue. Oh, we're going to end up in a nuclear war, and you guys that have a lot of years ahead will lose that opportunity. I'm too old. I could care less, but I see the handwriting on the wall. in my 81 years of life, tomorrow will be 81, I have seen many wars, I have seen many things.

I have heard the sirens, as a matter of fact, my dear Alex and Alexander, when I was in college in 1963, I heard I was in the bathroom. There was no one next to me, and I hear the air attack sirens blasting in LA. They used to have that every first Monday of the month. I was unaware. I had been in the USA for less than a month, and I hear those sirens. Gee, I flew out of that. bathroom,

toilet, and I see everybody walking, you know, around corridors, and I kept saying, what's going on? What's going on? Somebody told me, listen, it's the alert,

attack siren, and it blows every Tuesday. That was the gold war. Let's not have another one again, and this time we may end in a nuclear war. I have said my peace, and I have said, would like to dialogue with you.

Well, Gonzalo, this has been most moving and extremely powerful, and by the way, all very true. I just wanted to pick up a number of points that you've just said. We've just heard about the

terrible physical health condition of your son in this prison in Ukraine. Nobody who is ill in that way. Nobody who is ill in that way. should ever be in prison. That is the first thing to say.

They should be taken out of prison. They should be given the medical treatment they urgently need. They should be provided with complete access to their family, to their sister, to their father, to their children. Already, the very fact that Gonzalo is so ill and the fact that he's been kept in detention is profoundly wrong and deeply disturbing, and that in itself makes it absolutely essential

that he be released, and that people insist around the world and in the United States that he be released. The second thing I wanted to say is that we've now had some account of the kind of charges which are being brought against Gonzála, and the one that immediately stood out for me is the suggestion that he had,

has committed a crime against peace. Now, this is a meaningless concept in domestic law. It is taken from international law. It is taken from the Nuremberg hearing. In fact, I can say, there is no conceivable way that anybody could possibly be guilty of such a crime, and who has done the kind of things and live the kind of life that Gonzalo has done. And the very fact that he's been charged with this nebulous, astonishing offence, in and of itself, tells us that there is this entire legal proceeding that has been brought against him is, by definition, completely wrong. The third point I want to make, drawing from the points that, again, Gonzalo Sineyev has made,

is that, again, what Gonzalo is being actually prosecuted. for is because he warned the people of the United States, the people of the world on YouTube, an American platform of things that have turned out to be true, that Ukraine could not defeat Russia, that the West could not arm Ukraine to the point where it could defeat Russia, that the financial sanctions would backfire, that this whole policy was a mistake. You can read that every day now in mainstream media. Article after article is saying those things. Now, Gonzalo is being prosecuted, is being prosecuted,

because he said those things too soon and in Ukraine. He said, in other words, truth. He spoke truth to power and he spoke truth to us. and no one should ever be prosecuted, ever for saying the truth. So a peaceful man who told the truth, who is in terrible physical health, is being held in prison in Ukraine. Again, Gonzalo has told us about the interactions between Gonzalo and the State Department. I have to say that they deeply trouble and shock me, given that Gonzalo is an American

citizen born in the United States. I hope people in authority in the United States, in the state department, in the government of the United States, in Congress, are listening to this program, are hearing what we have been saying. I hope that citizens of the United States, people who care about the First Amendment of the Constitution, people who care about the Constitution, Gonzalo Senior has talked to us about the founding fathers of the United States, the kind of country they imagined the United States to be. He's referenced presidents like President Eisenhower and President Kennedy. Well, everyone in the United States, in and out of government, in and out of power in the United States,

who cares about these matters, should demand and seek and insist that, the American citizen who's exercising his constitutional rights and who has told the truth and who is so ill in a country supported by the United States, Gonzalo Lira should be released. Another thing that Gonzalo Sr. has told us, which I really do want to emphasize, is there's been an enormous amount of ill-informed, sometimes I have to say malicious speculation about Gonzalo Lira's reasons for doing what he did and above all for remaining in Ukraine. Gonzalo has now told us, Gonzalo Sr. has told us the explanation. And it is a complete, conclusive explanation.

It should bury that issue. Once and for all, he remained in Ukraine because he is a father. and he wants to be close to his children, one 10 years old, one seven years old. He believes he is a family man, he believes that the children should have a father. And this is the first Christmas, the one which has just passed, when he has not been with them. As someone who recently became a father himself, I'm speaking about myself, I'm speaking about myself, I understand completely that feeling. The idea of being separated from my children would be unbearable to me,

and I'm sure they would be incredibly unbearable to anybody who has children. And lastly, Gonzalo Senior has spoken to us about the current policies of the United States, the kind of things that he has been doing. but I want to highlight the specific point that he has made about the government of the United States, the president of the United States, the senior officials of the United States, rediscovering their humanity. Because it is humanity ultimately. That is the most important thing.

It is humanity which keeps us human. that is an obvious thing to say, but it is a true one and an important one. If we lose sight of our humanity, we cease to be humans, we become something else, we become monsters, and as monsters, we become complicit in the detention, the possible torture, the likely torture, everything we've heard about, Gonzales' treatment, points to that, and who knows perhaps the even worse outcome for somebody, Gonzalo Lira, who has, let me repeat again, done nothing else than exercise his lawful, democratic, constitutional rights and has told the truth in doing so. So those are the points I wanted to make to highlight from the statement,

the very powerful statement we have just heard. Let me read. repeat again that every one of us should work hard to try to get Gonzalo released. And I wanted to say my own thanks to you, Gonzalo Senior, for agreeing to come onto this program, for speaking this extraordinary moving and eloquent way about your son. I don't know if there's anything further you wish to add. And that is what I personally wanted to say. Yes. I'd like to supplement Alexander what you said. As an aside, I have a video of Gonzalo with his son Ramon, taking him in his motorcycle, just like I did when Gonzaro was nine, eight years old. He is a famine, man. He loves his children, and this is outrageous. But I'd like to, points that I hope the embassy makes 180 degree change in my son's suffering and begins

communicated with them permanently as their protocol establishes in every embassy of the USA throughout the world when an American citizen, my birth in this case, is detained. I want the embassy to permanently communicate with him, advising us as to his state of health and how he is doing, but ensuring by going to visit Gonzalo that is not being tortured. as he was tortured, as Gonzalo said, in the month of May and June, and extorted of $70,000 or lose your left eye with a toothpick. I mean, those are facts. You may see them in one of his three videos while he wanted to cross the border to hungry.

all I want the embassy keep touch with my son I have not received information as a matter of fact through the defense attorney his state of health in the hospital that he's in-in

the last I saw or the last I heard was by reading his letter to my daughter where he's saying I'm going they are going to do a procedure because of the edema that I'm suffering on top of what I have.

And that was the last thing I heard. And that operation, I have doctors in my family. It's a very delicate operation. I mean, you have to have a very good surgeon. Okay. Now, all this is something that is bringing to us. Anxiety, we should not have to leave this. And I blame Selensky.

And I'm sure because more than one people have said that the USA gave the green light so that he could be apprehended. Don't forget Gonzalo's video of April 27 when he blasted Biden and Kamala Harris. He said that Biden should leave offices. He said he will not finish his mandate. Well, I think the impeachment is far behind. They should have started this thing two, three years ago. Because he has guided the USA into terrible grounds. The USA is isolated in the world.

I live outside the USA and I hear. I travel to other countries. I travel to Europe. I know the man in the streets opinion of the USA presently. the USA had a very good reputation in South America. Not so now because of Biden. Biden is destroying the USA. And the protocol that they have in the embassy is a lot.

I mean, they're not doing anything to my son until September when they started saying, no, we have to communicate it with Gonzalo through video conference. That's rubbish. You have to communicate with the U.S. citizen detained overseas. You have to visit him physically. See him, I, why, where he can tell you what is really going on with this terrible ordeal my son is going through. No human being deserves this.

You don't catch pneumonia in a normal living condition. You catch pneumonia. Everybody knows. When you're exposed to oath, that dungeon must be horrible. And

they are torturing my son. I have no question that he's still being tortured from those. I don't want to put the words I have in the air. But I think, because of the new authority, It's when you receive a blow.

People that have that is because they have had an automobile accident. And they hit themselves. They don't have open back. You know, the bag. They hit themselves against a steering wheel or the dashboard. And that would cause it the funeral horror. It's a serious condition.

That's what I wanted to supplement with, what you said, Alexander. Thank you very much, Gonzales. Alex Thank you very much Gonzalo Senior Alexander Thank you very much

We will end it there Thank you Thank you