Machado

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado has declared that authorities in her home country would have attempted everything possible to prevent her journey to Norway, after she emerged publicly for the first time in nearly a year.

Machado greeted supporters from an Oslo hotel balcony in the early hours of Thursday following a high-risk exit from Venezuela, where she had been in hiding since January.

The journey, which purportedly included navigating 10 military checkpoints and crossing the Caribbean by fishing vessel, brought her to the Norwegian capital to collect her Nobel Peace Prize.

During a news conference at Norway’s parliament, the 58-year-old right-wing opposition figure delivered sharp criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s administration, asserting that the government deploys national resources to suppress its population.

When questioned about an oil tanker seized by Washington on Wednesday, she argued this demonstrated how the regime operates. Asked whether she would support a United States invasion, Machado claimed Venezuela had already been invaded by Russian and Iranian agents alongside drug cartels.

“This has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas,” she said, standing alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.

“What sustains the regime is a very powerful and strongly funded repression system. Where do those funds come from? Well, from drug trafficking, from the black market of oil, from arms trafficking and from human trafficking. We need to cut those flows.”

The trip reunited her with family members she had not seen in almost two years, including her daughter, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf at Wednesday’s ceremony.

Aligned with Trump 

The political leader has welcomed international sanctions and US military intervention in Venezuela, a move her critics say harkens back to a dark past.

The US has a long history of interference in the region, particularly in the 1980s, when it propped up repressive right-wing governments through coups, and funded paramilitary groups across Latin America that were responsible for mass killings, forced disappearances and other grave human rights abuses.

Venezuelan authorities cited Machado’s support for sanctions and US intervention when they barred her from running for office in last year’s presidential election, where she had intended to challenge Maduro. Machado has accused Venezuela’s president of stealing the July 2024 election, which was criticised by international observers.

Praising the Trump administration’s approach, Machado said the president’s actions had been “decisive to reach the point where we are right now, in which the regime is weaker than ever.”

She insisted she would return home but did not say when. “I’m going back to Venezuela regardless of when Maduro goes out. He’s going out, but the moment will be determined by when I’m finished doing the things that I came out to do,” she told reporters.

Her escape comes as tensions between Washington and Caracas have intensified sharply. The Trump administration has positioned major naval forces in the Caribbean and conducted strikes against alleged drug vessels since September. The US seized what Trump called a “very large” oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, on Wednesday.

Machado has aligned herself with right-wing hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.

The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast, killing more than 80 people.

Human rights groups, some US Democrats, and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Machado’s two-month escape operation involved wearing a disguise and departing from a coastal fishing village on a wooden boat bound for Curacao before boarding a private aircraft to Norway.

US forces were alerted to avoid striking the vessel, the WSJ reported, as they had one with similar boats in recent months. Machado confirmed receiving assistance from Washington during her escape.

Maduro, in power since 2013 following the death of Hugo Chavez, says Trump is pushing for regime change in the country to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. He has pledged to resist such attempts.

A United Nations report released on Thursday accused Venezuela’s security forces of crimes against humanity over more than a decade.

Venezuelan Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello said Machado left the country “without drama” but provided no details.

Dec. 11 (UPI) — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has made her first public appearance in over a year early Thursday, just hours after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Machado was greeted by cheering supporters in the streets of Oslo.

A video of the scene was posted to her X account, showing a smiling Machado from the balcony of the Grand Hotel waving to a group of hundreds outside.

Pictures of her greeting and embracing supporters on the street were also published on her X account.

“The hug that all of Venezuela needs,” she wrote in a caption accompanying the photos.

Machado, 58, made the appearance at around 2:30 a.m. local time, The New York Times reported.

Her appearance in the Scandinavian country follows more than a year of her hiding from the regime of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro.

Machado led an opposition movement that many Venezuelans and international observers believe outpolled Maduro in last year’s elections. She won the opposition primary but was barred from appearing on the general election ballot by the Maduro regime, a move widely condemned.

She then backed presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez in the race who is believed by the opposition and many observers to have won the election. Maduro, however, responded by intensifying repression and human rights abuses against political opponents and public dissent, while his government-controlled National Electoral Council declared him the winner.

Her appearance came as she traveled to Oslo to participate in the Nobel Prize Ceremony as she was this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a phone call released by the organization, Machado said she was on her way to Oslo, stating she was grateful for all those who risked their lives to make it happen.

“This is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, before boarding a plane.

She was unable to reach Oslo in time to receive the award, with her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, taking the diploma and medal on her mother’s behalf at Oslo’s City Hall.

And she read her mother’s acceptance speech.

“My dear Venezuelans, the world has marveled at what we have achieved. And soon, it will witness one of the most moving sights of our time: our loved ones coming home — and I will stand again on the Simon Bolivar bridge, where I once cried among the thousands who were leaving, and welcome them back into the luminous life that awaits us,” Sosa said on her mother’s behalf.

“Because in the end, our journey towards freedom has always lived inside us. We are returning to ourselves. We are returning home.”

Right-wing opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was missing from the ceremony awarding her this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She’s been in hiding for the past year since she accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of rigging the July 2024 election.

Dec. 10 (UPI) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado did not attend a ceremony in Oslo to receive her award on Wednesday as the Venezuelan opposition leader was in hiding from the regime of President Nicolas Maduro, somewhere in the country.

The Norwegian committee said in a news release that Machado had done everything possible to make what it said would have been a very risky journey, but confirmed she was safe and appeared to suggest her imminent arrival in Norway.

“Machado 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 statement read.

The news followed days of contradictory statements over whether Machado, who has been in hiding since disputed elections in July 2024, would make it to Oslo. Machado, who has been repeatedly threatened with arrest by Venezuelan authorities has not appeared in public since January.

Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, received the diploma and medal on her behalf at the ceremony at City Hall in the Norwegian capital.

The committee shared a recording of a phone call with Machado in which she confirmed she would not attend to receive her prize, which was awarded in recognition “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

“I want to thank the Norwegian Nobel committee for this immense recognition to the fight of our people for democracy and freedom. We feel very emotional and very honoured, and that’s why I’m very sad and very sorry to tell you that I won’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony, but I will be in Oslo and on my way to Oslo right now.

“I know that there are hundreds of Venezuelans from different parts of the world that were able to reach your city, that are right now in Oslo, as well as my family, my team, so many colleagues. Since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them.”

Machado, who ran for president in 2011 and attemped to run last year, has been a leader of the country’s democratic movement more than 20 years, opposing and holding to account the administration of Hugo Chavez, first, and then the authoritarian rule of Maduro.

She was elected to the National Assembly in 2010 but removed in 2014 after being accused of conspiring with other critics and the United States to assassinate Maduro. She denies the charges which she says were based on fabricated evidence.

In October 2023, she won a primary to run against Maduro in last summer’s election, to which the Maduro government responded by banning her from politics for 15 years. She was replaced on the ballot by Edmundo Gonzalez.

The results of the July 2024 were widely rejected by the opposition and internationally, including by Brazil, Colombia and the United States, which instead recognized Gonzalez as the real winner.

He fled the country in September in 2024 and was granted political asylum in Spain.

The build-up to the ceremony has been tinged with shadowy intrigue, after the Nobel institute earlier said Machado’s whereabouts were unknown.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will not receive the Nobel Peace Prize in person at an award ceremony in Oslo but she will be in the European city, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has said.

Machado, 58, was due to receive the award on Wednesday at Oslo City Hall in the presence of Norway’s monarchs and Latin American leaders, including fellow right-wing politicians Argentinian President Javier Milei and Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa.

The opposition leader of the Vente Venezuela party was awarded the prize in October, with the Nobel committee praising Machado’s role in the country’s opposition movement and her “steadfast” support for democracy.

Machado, who holds many right-wing views, dedicated it in part to United States President Donald Trump, who has said he, himself deserved the honour and was infuriated that he did not.

“Although she will not be able to reach the ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that Machado is safe and that she will be with us in Oslo,” the institute stated.

She is expected to reach Oslo “sometime between this evening and tomorrow morning,” the institute’s director Kristian Berg Harpviken told the AFP news agency on Wednesday, shortly before the 1pm (12:00 GMT) ceremony, at which her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, is set to accept the award in her place.

“I will be in Oslo, I am on my way,” Machado stated in an audio recording released by the institute.

The announcement was part of a sequence of events more befitting of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, as the institute had earlier stated Machado’s whereabouts were unknown. A planned news conference a day earlier was also cancelled due to her absence.

Machado has a decade-long travel ban on her and has spent more than a year in hiding.

Alignment with right-wing hawks

The political leader has welcomed international sanctions and US military intervention in Venezuela, a move her critics say harkens back to a dark past.

The US has a long history of interference in the region, particularly in the 1980s when it propped up repressive right-wing governments through coups, and funded paramilitary groups across Latin America that were responsible for mass killings, forced disappearances and other grave human rights abuses.

Venezuelan authorities cited Machado’s support for sanctions and US intervention when they barred her from running for office in last year’s presidential election, where she had intended to challenge President Nicolas Maduro. Machado has accused Maduro of stealing the July 2024 election.

Shortly after her Nobel win in October, Machado also voiced support for Israel in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.

Machado has previously pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as Trump did with the US diplomatic presence during his first term in office, if her movement comes to power. This would be on par with other right-wing Latin American leaders who have taken pro-Israel stances, including Argentina’s Milei and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Machado has aligned herself with right-wing hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.

The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast.

Human rights groups, some US Democrats and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

Maduro, in power since 2013 following the death of Hugo Chavez, says Trump is pushing for regime change in the country to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. He has pledged to resist such attempts.

Venezuela’s armed forces are planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance in the event of a US air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by the Reuters news agency.

Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have rallied in countries around the world to celebrate her Nobel Peace Prize win ahead of Wednesday’s award ceremony

Thousands of people marched through Madrid, Utrecht, Buenos Aires, Lima, Brisbane and other cities on Saturday in support of 58-year-old Machado, who won the Nobel award for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in Venezuela.

The crowd in Peru’s capital, Lima, carried portraits of Machado and demanded a “Free Venezuela”. With the country’s yellow, blue and red flag draped over their backs or emblazoned on their caps, demonstrators clutched posters that read, “The Nobel Prize is from Venezuela.”

Veronica Duran, a 41-year-old Venezuelan who has lived in Lima for eight years, said Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated because “it represents all Venezuelans, the fallen and the political prisoners in their fight to recover democracy”.

Machado, who has been in hiding since August 2024, wants to use the attention gained by the award to highlight Venezuela ‘s democratic aspirations.

Her organisation said it expected demonstrations in more than 80 cities around the world.

In Colombia, a group of Venezuelans gathered in the capital, Bogota, wearing white T-shirts and carrying balloons as part of a religious ceremony in which supporters asked that the Nobel Peace Prize “be a symbol of hope” for the Venezuelan people.

Meanwhile, in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, some 500 people gathered on the steps of the law school at the country’s largest university, improvising a torchlit march with their mobile phones.

“We Venezuelans in the world have a smile today, because we celebrate the Nobel Prize of María Corina and of the entire Venezuelan diaspora, and of all the brave people within Venezuela who have sacrificed themselves… we have so many martyrs, heroes of the resistance,” said Nancy Hoyer, a 60-year-old supporter.

The gatherings come at a critical point in the country’s protracted crisis as the administration of United States President Donald Trump builds up a massive military deployment in the Caribbean, threatening repeatedly to strike Venezuelan soil.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s has branded the US operation an effort to end his hold on power.

The Trump administration has said it does not recognise Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

Maduro claimed a re-election victory last year in a national ballot that the US and other Western governments dismissed as a sham, and which independent observers said the opposition won overwhelmingly.

Machado had won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against Maduro, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, who had never run for office before, took her place.

The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. It all increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.

Gonzalez sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.

Meanwhile, Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in what ended up being an underwhelming protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.

The following day, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term.

“We are living through times where our composure, our conviction and our organisation are being tested,” Machado said in a video message shared on Tuesday on social media.

“Times when our country needs even more dedication, because now, all these years of struggle, the dignity of the Venezuelan people, have been recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Machado won the award on October 10 for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness”.

According to the head of the Nobel Institute, Machado has promised to go to Norway to pick up her prize on Wednesday.

“I was in contact with Machado last night [Friday], and she confirms that she will be in Oslo for the ceremony,” Kristian Berg Harpviken told the AFP news agency.

“Given the security situation, we cannot say more about the date or how she will arrive,” he said.