Machado says she will return to Venezuela
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who reappeared this Thursday in Oslo after more than a year in hiding and after secretly leaving Venezuela, has stated that she will return to her country, although she did not give details of when she might return. “I have come [to Oslo] to receive the [Nobel Peace] prize on behalf of the people of Venezuela and I will take it back to Venezuela in due course. Of course, I will not say when that will be,” she told reporters during her visit to the Norwegian capital. Earlier, in an interview, she had stated that she would return despite knowing “exactly the risks” involved.
“Of course I’m going back. I know exactly the risks I’m taking. I’m going to be where I can be most useful to our cause,” the politician stated in an interview with the BBC released this Thursday. “Until recently, the place I believed I needed to be was Venezuela; the place I believe I need to be today, on behalf of our cause, is Oslo,” she added.
“For more than 16 months I haven’t been able to hug or touch anyone. Suddenly, in a matter of hours, I’ve been able to see the people I love most, touch them, cry and pray together,” she added, after landing early this morning in Oslo, where she was greeted by her children and dozens of supporters.
Machado has long denounced the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as “criminal” and has called on Venezuelans to unite to overthrow him. “The Venezuelan government says I’m a terrorist and that I have to spend the rest of my life in prison, and they’re looking for me,” she said. “So leaving Venezuela today, under these circumstances, is very, very dangerous,” Machado admitted. “I just want to say today that I’m here because many men and women risked their lives so that I could get to Oslo.”
She was barred from running in last year's presidential elections, in which Maduro won a third six-year term, but the results were widely dismissed internationally as neither free nor fair. “We need to address this regime not as a conventional dictatorship, but as a criminal structure,” Machado said, accusing the Maduro regime of being financed by criminal activities such as drug trafficking and human trafficking, and reiterating her calls for the international community to help Venezuela “cut off those flows” of criminal resources.
When Machado was asked if she would support a US military attack on Venezuelan soil, given Washington's recent attacks on suspected drug-laden vessels, she did not answer directly. Instead, she accused Maduro of"handing over our sovereignty to criminal organizations." She stated that she and her team are prepared to form a government in Venezuela and that she offered to meet with Maduro's team to seek a peaceful transition, but"they rejected it." (EFE)
