Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who has been in hiding for months, has told the press that she knows “exactly the risks” she’s taking by travelling to Norway to collect her Nobel Peace Prize.
Machado appeared in Oslo in the middle of the night, waving from the balcony of a hotel. It was the first time she has been seen in public since January.
The 58-year-old made the covert journey despite a travel ban and a threat from the Venezuelan government that she would be labelled as a fugitive.
In an emotional moment, Machado waved to cheering supporters who had gathered outside the Norwegian capital’s Grand Hotel, blowing them kisses and singing with them.
To their delight, she then came outside and greeted them in person, climbing over the security barricades to get closer.
“Maria!” “Maria!” they shouted, holding their phones aloft to record the historic moment.
Earlier on Wednesday, her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her mother’s behalf.
The Nobel Institute awarded Machado the prize this year for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy” in Venezuela.
Until Wednesday night, the mother of three had not seen her children in about two years, having sent them away from Venezuela for their own safety.
In an interview with the BBC’s Lucy Hockings after her balcony appearance, Machado said she had missed their graduations, and the weddings of her daughter and one of her sons.
“For over 16 months I haven’t been able to hug or touch anyone,” she said. “Suddenly in the matter of a few hours I’ve been able to see the people I love the most, and touch them and cry and pray together.”
During the BBC interview, Machado had many rosary beads hanging around her neck, which she said supporters had given to her outside the hotel.
There has been much speculation about whether she will be able to safely return to Venezuela.
“Of course I’m going back,” she told the BBC. “I know exactly the risks I’m taking.”
“I’m going to be in the place where I’m most useful for our cause,” she continued. “Until a short time ago, the place I thought I had to be was Venezuela, the place I believe I have to be today, on behalf of our cause, is Oslo.”
Considered one of the country’s most respected voices in Venezuela’s opposition, Machado has long denounced President Nicolás Maduro’s government as “criminal” and called on Venezuelans to unite to depose it.
She was barred from running in last year’s presidential elections, in which he won a third six-year term in office. The vote was widely dismissed on the international stage as neither free nor fair, and many nations view his rule as illegitimate.
“We need to address this regime not as a conventional dictatorship, but as a criminal structure,” she told the BBC.
Machado accused his regime of being funded by criminal activities such as drugs and human trafficking, repeating calls for the international community to help Venezuela “cut those inflows” of criminal resources.
Maduro has always vehemently denied being connected to cartels.
When asked whether she would support a US military strike on Venezuelan soil, given Washington’s recent attacks on alleged drug vessels, Machado did not answer directly but instead accused Maduro of “giving away our sovereignty to criminal organisations”.
“We didn’t want a war, we didn’t look for it… it was Maduro who declared war on the Venezuelan people,” she added.
Machado says she and her team are ready to form a government in Venezuela, and that she offered to sit down with Maduro’s team to work out a peaceful transition, but “they rejected it”.
The BBC asked Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who sat with Machado during the interview, whether a possible violent takeover to unseat Nicolás Maduro would contradict her Peace Prize.
He said the burden for peace should be placed on the current Venezuelan government: “The power lies in the Maduro regime, they have the responsibility to make sure this is a peaceful transition.”
Even after she was barred from the election last year, Machado continued to campaign for the candidate who replaced her on the ballot, Edmundo González.
Maduro was declared the winner, even though polling station tallies showed that González had won by a landslide.
The Maduro government has repeatedly threatened Machado with arrest, accusing her of calling for a foreign invasion and labelling her a terrorist for protesting against the election results.
Last month, Venezuela’s attorney general said Machado would be considered a fugitive if she travelled to Norway to collect her prize, saying she was accused of “acts of conspiracy, incitement of hatred, and terrorism”.
It made her journey to Norway difficult and risky.
The details of the trip were kept so tightly under wraps, that even the Nobel Institute did not know where she was or whether she would be in Oslo in time for the prize ceremony.
The Wall Street Journal reports that to escape Venezuela, Machado wore a disguise, managed to get through 10 military checkpoints without being caught, and sailed away on a wooden skiff from a coastal fishing village.
The plan was two months in the making, it reports, citing a person close to the operation, and she was assisted by a Venezuelan network that helps people flee the country. The US was also involved, the report says, but it is unclear to what extent.
Machado did not deny these details to the BBC, but also would not elaborate on the journey.
“They [the Venezuelan government] say I’m a terrorist and have to be in jail for the rest of my life and they’re looking for me,” she said. “So leaving Venezuela today, in these circumstances, is very, very dangerous.
“I just want to say today that I’m here, because many men and women risked their lives in order for me to arrive in Oslo.”
Mr Frydnes had described her journey to Norway as “a situation of extreme danger”.
Sitting next to her during the BBC interview, he said it was an “emotional” moment for him.
“In the middle of the night to have you here, it’s incredible,” he said. “It’s hard to describe what it means to the Nobel committee and to all of us.”
After her Peace Prize win was announced in October, Machado made a point to praise US President Donald Trump, who is open about his own ambitions for the Peace Prize and is locked in ongoing military tension with Venezuela.
On Wednesday, he announced the US military had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a sharp escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against Maduro’s government.
The Trump administration alleges the vessel was under sanction and was involved in an “illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations”.
The Venezuelan government accused the US of theft and piracy.
