Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado has declared that authorities in her home country would have attempted everything possible to prevent her journey to Norway, after she emerged publicly for the first time in nearly a year.
Machado greeted supporters from an Oslo hotel balcony in the early hours of Thursday following a high-risk exit from Venezuela, where she had been in hiding since January.
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The journey, which purportedly included navigating 10 military checkpoints and crossing the Caribbean by fishing vessel, brought her to the Norwegian capital to collect her Nobel Peace Prize.
During a news conference at Norway’s parliament, the 58-year-old right-wing opposition figure delivered sharp criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s administration, asserting that the government deploys national resources to suppress its population.
When questioned about an oil tanker seized by Washington on Wednesday, she argued this demonstrated how the regime operates. Asked whether she would support a United States invasion, Machado claimed Venezuela had already been invaded by Russian and Iranian agents alongside drug cartels.
“This has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas,” she said, standing alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
“What sustains the regime is a very powerful and strongly funded repression system. Where do those funds come from? Well, from drug trafficking, from the black market of oil, from arms trafficking and from human trafficking. We need to cut those flows.”
The trip reunited her with family members she had not seen in almost two years, including her daughter, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf at Wednesday’s ceremony.
Aligned with Trump
The political leader has welcomed international sanctions and US military intervention in Venezuela, a move her critics say harkens back to a dark past.
The US has a long history of interference in the region, particularly in the 1980s, when it propped up repressive right-wing governments through coups, and funded paramilitary groups across Latin America that were responsible for mass killings, forced disappearances and other grave human rights abuses.
Venezuelan authorities cited Machado’s support for sanctions and US intervention when they barred her from running for office in last year’s presidential election, where she had intended to challenge Maduro. Machado has accused Venezuela’s president of stealing the July 2024 election, which was criticised by international observers.
Praising the Trump administration’s approach, Machado said the president’s actions had been “decisive to reach the point where we are right now, in which the regime is weaker than ever.”
She insisted she would return home but did not say when. “I’m going back to Venezuela regardless of when Maduro goes out. He’s going out, but the moment will be determined by when I’m finished doing the things that I came out to do,” she told reporters.
Her escape comes as tensions between Washington and Caracas have intensified sharply. The Trump administration has positioned major naval forces in the Caribbean and conducted strikes against alleged drug vessels since September. The US seized what Trump called a “very large” oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, on Wednesday.
Machado has aligned herself with right-wing hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.
The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast, killing more than 80 people.
Human rights groups, some US Democrats, and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Machado’s two-month escape operation involved wearing a disguise and departing from a coastal fishing village on a wooden boat bound for Curacao before boarding a private aircraft to Norway.
US forces were alerted to avoid striking the vessel, the WSJ reported, as they had one with similar boats in recent months. Machado confirmed receiving assistance from Washington during her escape.
Maduro, in power since 2013 following the death of Hugo Chavez, says Trump is pushing for regime change in the country to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. He has pledged to resist such attempts.
A United Nations report released on Thursday accused Venezuela’s security forces of crimes against humanity over more than a decade.
