COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Venezuela’s María Corina Machado, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, shared her emotional reunion with her children after travelling from a hideout in Venezuela to Oslo, reported German Press Agency (dpa).
“I couldn’t sleep last night going over and over again the first instant when I saw my children,” the Venezuelan opposition leader said on Thursday at a press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.
Machado said she had longed for that moment for weeks, wondering which of her grown-up children she would hug first.
“I hugged them, the three, at the same time, and it has been one of the most extraordinary, spiritual moments of my life,” she said.
The 58-year-old opponent of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro arrived in the Norwegian capital during the night, hours after her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted the peace prize on her behalf at the official award ceremony in Oslo.
The Nobel Institute awarded Machado the prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
Machado is under investigation in Venezuela on charges including treason and had spent more than a year largely in hiding before her trip to Oslo.
Prosecutors previously said she would be considered a fugitive if she left the country.
On returning to Venezuela, she could face arrest or be denied entry. – BERNAMA-dpa
