Venezuelan Opposition Leader María Corina Machado has escaped Venezuela in secret and fled to Norway to receive her Nobel Peace Prize.
María Corina Machado was in hiding in Venezuela before she fled the country on the 9th December. She fled in disguise, and driven through ten military checkpoints by an escort to the coast of Falcón State. From there, she boarded a boat which transported her to the Dutch island of Curaçao. She took a private jet straight to Oslo, Norway, but her arrival was delayed and her prize was collected by her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado. She made her first public appearance in Oslo unannounced from the balcony of her hotel-room (Grand Hotel).
In her lecture addressed to commemorate her prize, María Corina Machado described the brutality and the violence of the repression by the incumbent Venezuelan ruling-regime run by President Nicholas Maduro. She highlighted that up to 2,500 people have been abducted. killed or disappeared. The repression by the Venezuelan regime escalated last year when it fraudulently declared it won the elections and repression is ongoing. She also highlighted the extreme poverty into which the country has fallen as a result of widespread corruption and criminality by the government. The Opposition Leader reiterated that the country is united against the regime and the opposition is formed of people from all walks of life.
Last Sunday, a Venezuelan Opposition figure died in custody. Alfredo Díaz, a former governor of Nueva Esparta state, was a prominent critic of President Maduro and was jailed on the last of November 24th.
You can watch the award-giving ceremony here. President elect Edmundo Gonzalez also attended the ceremony.
Newsroom
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