María Corina Machado made an emotional appearance in Oslo following months in hiding
Venezuela’s opposition leader, who had been in hiding for nearly a year, has made her first public appearance after a daring escape from her homeland to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
María Corina Machado appeared in Oslo in the early hours of Thursday, waving from a hotel balcony to an emotional crowd – her first public sighting since January this year.
Her appearance came just hours after her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf on Wednesday.
The 58-year-old opposition leader was honoured for mounting the most significant peaceful challenge in years to the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Freedom! Freedom!” the crowd gathered outside the hotel chanted after seeing Machado. Together, they sang Venezuela’s national anthem.
Machado, dressed in jeans and a puffer jacket, spent several minutes outside the hotel, joined by family members and close aides.
She hugged supporters as the crowd chanted “President! President!”
“I want you all back in Venezuela,” Machado said as people lifted their cellphones to take pictures.
Machado’s protest against Maduro began after she won an opposition primary election and planned to challenge him in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, only for the government to ban her from running.
The lead-up to the election on July 28, 2024, saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations.
That increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is filled with Maduro loyalists, declared the incumbent the winner.
UN human rights officials and many independent rights groups have expressed concerns about the situation in Venezuela and called for Maduro to be held accountable for the crackdown on dissent.
In January, Machado was briefly detained after she joined supporters at a protest opposing Maduro’s government in Caracas. She was then forced into hiding.
Before her appearance on Thursday, she had said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that she wouldn’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony but that many people had “risked their lives” for her to arrive in Oslo.
In a speech read by her daughter at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, Machado said that Venezuela showed the world that “we must be willing to fight for freedom”.
“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said.
Machado added: “Since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them. And as soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I’ve not seen for two years and so many Venezuelans, Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight.”
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that “María Corina Machado has done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today – a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”
“She wants to live in a free Venezuela, and she will never give up on that purpose,” she said.
“That is why we all know, and I know, that she will be back in Venezuela very soon.”
Prominent Latin American figures also attended the ceremony in a show of solidarity with Machado, including Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.
Watne Frydnes said that “Venezuela has evolved into a brutal authoritarian state,” and he described Machado as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in recent Latin American history.”
Five past Nobel Peace Prize laureates were detained or imprisoned at the time of the award, according to the prize’s official website.
Most recently, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023 and Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski in 2022.
The others were Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar in 1991 and Carl von Ossietzky of Germany in 1935.
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