Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado appeared in Oslo on Thursday to a cheering crowd of her supporters, making it her first public appearance in almost a year since she went into hiding after being barred from running in her country’s presidential election.
Ms Machado stepped out onto the balcony of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, where Nobel laureates usually stay, dressed in a black puffer jacket and jeans to huge cheers and applause from a crowd of people who had gathered in the dead of the night just to catch a glimpse of the fugitive Venezuelan opposition figure.
Though she could not make it to the ceremony at the Norwegian capital in time to accept the prestigious award in person, Ms Machado’s public appearance was significant – it was in defiance of a decade-long travel ban imposed upon her in her home country and being declared a fugitive by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s administration.
She is said to have made a daring escape from Venezuela by boat on Tuesday and travelled to the Caribbean island of Curacao, from where she departed on a private plane for Norway, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms Machado was forced into hiding after Mr Maduro accused her of stealing the July 2024 presidential election.
With a hand on her heart, the 58-year-old pro-democracy activist joined her supporters in singing the Venezuelan national anthem “Gloria al Bravo Pueblo (Glory to the Brave People)”.
Later, she also walked downstairs to meet the supporters who chanted “courageous!” and “freedom!” outside her hotel. She spent several minutes outside, where she was joined by members of her family and several of her closest aides. She hugged many in the crowd amid chants of “president! president!”
“I want you all back in Venezuela,” Ms Machado said as people lifted their cellphones to take pictures.
Videos showed her climbing over metal barricades to hug some of her supporters who had gathered to meet her outside the 19th-century building. Her appearance came shortly after her daughter received the Nobel Prize on her behalf at the ceremony.
A large portrait of a smiling Machado hung in the Oslo City Hall to represent her at the ceremony.
Ms Machado 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.
“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, before indicating that she was about to board a plane.
“Freedom is a choice that must be renewed each day, measured by our willingness and our courage to defend it. For this reason, the cause of Venezuela transcends our borders,” she said in her prepared speech.
“A people who choose freedom contribute not only to themselves, but to humanity.”
Ms Machado has been in hiding since 9 January when she made a brief appearance to address her supporters at a rally protesting the swearing in of the president for a third term.
Mr Maduro is widely considered a dictator and not recognised by the US as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. He was sworn in to a third six-year term in January, and he maintains he was the legitimate winner of the presidential election last year.
The contentious elections were widely dismissed by Venezuela’s opposition and much of the international community as rigged, igniting protests across the country.
Ms Machado had won an opposition primary election and intended to challenge Mr Maduro in the election last year in July but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo Gonzilez stood in her place.
The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. That increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Mr Maduro’s loyalists, declared the incumbent the winner.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that Ms Machado has “done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today – a journey in a situation of extreme danger.” The audience cheered and clapped when Mr Frydnes said during his speech that Ms Machado would be coming to Oslo.
He said “Venezuela has evolved into a brutal authoritarian state”, describing Ms Machado as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in recent Latin American history.”
Many past Nobel laureates have been unable to collect their awards with some detained or imprisoned in their home country.
Most recently, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023 and Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski in 2022 were unable to attend the ceremony. Others include Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar in 1991 and Carl von Ossietzky of Germany in 1935.
