Machado uses Nobel stage to condemn ‘state terrorism’ as daughter delivers speech in Oslo

Venezuela’s opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado used her moment on the world stage to accuse President Nicolas Maduro of ruling through “state terrorism”, urging Venezuelans to keep fighting for freedom, even as she remained in hiding.

Machado has spent more than a year underground, dodging threats and arrest warrants. Her daughter stood in for her at Wednesday’s ceremony in Oslo, after a covert attempt to reach Norway failed at the last minute.

“It reminds the world that democracy is essential to peace,” Ana Corina Sosa Machado said, reading her mother’s words inside Oslo City Hall. “More than anything, what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey: that to have a democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom.”

Machado warned that Venezuelans realised too late “that our country was slipping into a dictatorship”, adding:

“Freedom is a choice that must be renewed each day, measured by our willingness and our courage to defend it.”

The Nobel Committee has praised Machado’s “steadfast” defence of democratic rights, though her alignment with US President Donald Trump, to whom she dedicated part of her prize, has drawn criticism at home.

Hours before the ceremony, the Nobel Institute released an audio message from Machado declaring:

“I will be in Oslo, I am on my way to Oslo right now.”

Reuters later reported that she fled Venezuela by boat to Curacao, then boarded a private jet toward Norway, attempting to defy a decade-long travel ban. She ultimately did not make it in time.

Machado, leader of the Vente Venezuela party, was barred from the 2024 presidential race despite winning the opposition primary by a landslide. After the contested July election, authorities widened their crackdown, prompting her to go underground.

Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Joergen Watne Frydnes used his remarks to underscore the moral burden placed on dissidents facing authoritarian rule.

“It is unfair,” he said, “that fighters for democracy are expected to pursue their aims with a moral purity their opponents never display.”
People living under dictatorship, he added, “often have to choose between the difficult and the impossible.”