Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado manages to leave Venezuela: ‘I will be in Oslo, I’m on my way’
The opposition leader is traveling to Norway but will not be present at the award ceremony. The prize committee highlighted her struggle to promote democracy in her country and her leadership of the resistance against Nicolás Maduro
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has managed to leave Venezuela to travel to Oslo, the Norwegian capital, although she will not be able to attend the award ceremony Wednesday, according to the Norwegian Nobel Institute. “She has done everything in her power to come to the ceremony today. A journey in a situation of extreme danger. Although she will not be able to reach the ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe and that she will be with us in Oslo,“ the organization said in a brief statement.
”I will be in Oslo, I am on my way,” Machado said in a telephone conversation with the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, released by the organization.
Machado’s possible arrival in Norway has caused enormous excitement both inside and outside Venezuela. Initially, the 58-year-old opposition leader was expected to make her first appearance in Norway at the traditional press conference preceding the award ceremony, which began at 1 p.m. local time, 8 a.m. in Venezuela. The meeting with the media was postponed and then canceled definitively by the organizers.
Ana Corina Sosa Machado, the opposition leader’s daughter, is expected to accept the award on her behalf, according to the official program. In parallel with the formal award ceremony, hundreds of Venezuelans who have made the trip are also expected to follow the event in a square adjacent to the Nobel Peace Center and a few meters from Oslo City Hall.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Machado this year “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” This year’s Nobel Prize recognizes more than two decades of struggle against repression, awarded to a political leader who has had to live in hiding for speaking out in a country where doing so has become a crime.
Two months later, the awarding of the prize represents one of the greatest symbolic victories achieved by the Venezuelan opposition in more than two decades of struggle against Chavismo.
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