Caracas, April 1 (IANS): Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has declared March 9 the Venezuelan anti-imperialist day, Efe news agency reported.

On this day in 2015, US President Barack Obama issued an order declaring Venezuela a threat to US security and extended sanctions against seven top Venezuelan officials.

"We will never forget this and on every March 9 we will celebrate the day of Bolivarian Anti-Imperialism in Venezuela, I hereby declare that from 2016 onwards March 9 will be the anti-imperialist day," Maduro said on Tuesday.

Maduro claimed that Obama's executive order has "caused a wave of global outrage against his unwise, erratic decision".

Washington's move included freezing assets that seven Venezuelan officials may hold in US jurisdictions, and accusing them of human rights violations during anti-government protests in Venezuela in 2014.

In mid-March, the Venezuelan government started a campaign to collect the signatures of at least 10 million of its total 30 million inhabitants on a petition demanding a repeal of the decree.

Maduro has said he would hand over the petition to Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Panama this April, together with supporting statements from multilateral organisations, including the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America and the Non-Aligned Movement.