Venezuela opposition chief to miss Nobel Prize award

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who lives in hiding, will not attend Wednesday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the award will be accepted by her daughter, organisers said.

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Machado has only been seen once in public since going underground in August last year amidst a tense showdown with President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuela’s attorney general has said the 58-year-old would be considered a “fugitive” if she left the country to accept the award.

It was not known in the hours before the ceremony whether Machado was in Norway for the event due to start at 1:00pm (1200 GMT). The Nobel Institute finally confirmed that she would not be there.

“It will be her daughter Ana Corina Machado who will receive the prize in her mother’s name,” Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken told Norway’s NRK radio. “Her daughter will give the speech that Maria Corina herself wrote.”

Harpviken said he “simply” did not know where Machado was.

Few people are informed of Machado’s movements because of the nature of Maduro’s “repressive regime which is willing to use absolutely all means against the opposition”, he said, noting that she “lives under a death threat from the regime”.

Machado’s mother and three daughters, and some Latin American heads of state, including Argentine President Javier Milei, are in Norway for the prize-giving at Oslo’s City Hall.