OSLO, Norway (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado appeared in public for the first time in 11 months early Thursday morning, when she waved to supporters from a hotel balcony in Norway’s capital hours after her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado appeared in public for the first time in 11 months early Thursday morning, when she waved to supporters from a hotel balcony in Norway’s capital hours after her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.
Machado and her supporters then sang Venezuela’s national anthem before she left the hotel to shake their hands. People erupted in cheers and began chanting, “Freedom! Freedom!” and “Thank you! Thank you!”
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Machado, dressed in jeans and a puffer jacket, spent several minutes outside the hotel, 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,” Machado said as people lifted their cellphones to take pictures.
Machado had been in hiding since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. She had been expected to attend the award ceremony Wednesday in Oslo, where heads of state and her family were among those waiting to see her.
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.
Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the prize in her place.
“She wants to live in a free Venezuela, and she will never give up on that purpose,” Sosa said. “That is why we all know, and I know, that she will be back in Venezuela very soon.”
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.”
“Although she will not be able to reach this ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe, and that she will be with us here in Oslo,” he said to applause.
