{"id":3226,"date":"2025-10-10T10:35:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/10\/10\/venezuelan-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-wins-nobel-peace-prize\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T10:35:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:35:37","slug":"venezuelan-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-wins-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/10\/10\/venezuelan-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-wins-nobel-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, a key opposition leader in Venezuela, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 f<\/strong>or her struggle to promote democratic rights in her country.<\/p>\n

Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding in her country, was blocked by Venezuela\u2019s courts from running for president against President Nicolas Maduro in the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is receiving the Nobel Peace 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,\u201d said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, awarding the prize on Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.<\/p>\n

Hailing Machado as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America, they added that Machado had been a \u201ckey unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided \u2013 an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government\u201d.<\/p>\n

Machado ran as the democratic opposition candidate in Venezuela\u2019s 2024 presidential election but was disqualified by Maduro\u2019s government and went on to support the opposition\u2019s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.<\/p>\n

Incumbent Maduro won re-election that year with 51 percent of the vote \u2013 his third win since he first took over as president in 2013 after the death of his mentor, former President Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n

But the opposition said the results were\u00a0rigged<\/a>, claiming Maduro had only won 30 percent of the vote and that Gonzalez was the real victor.<\/p>\n

The opposition received global support when it publicised vote counts collected from the country\u2019s election districts, showing that the opposition had won by a clear margin.<\/p>\n

Protests erupted, demanding the release of election results by individual polling stations and Maduro\u2019s government responded with a brutal\u00a0crackdown<\/a> on opposition protesters and leaders.<\/p>\n

J\u00f8rgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, praised Machado\u2019s decision to remain in her country, having been \u201cforced to live in hiding\u201d after \u201cserious threats against her life\u201d. Her choice, he said, had \u201cinspired millions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) congratulated Machado. \u201cThis recognition reflects the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections, for civil and political rights and for the rule of law,\u201d said OHCHR spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan.<\/p>\n

\u2018Brave women and men\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded\u00a0the awards\u00a0in his 1895 will.<\/p>\n

The committee said in its announcement of this year\u2019s winner that it has always \u201chonoured brave women and men who have stood up to repression, who have carried the hope of freedom in prison cells, on the streets and in public squares, and who have shown by their actions that peaceful resistance can change the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Winners in recent history include Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023, Congolese humanitarian Denis Mukwege in 2018,\u00a0 and former United States President Barack Obama in 2009. Malala Yousafzai became the youngest recipient of the award in 2014 at the age of 17. The oldest laureate is Joseph Rotblat, honoured at 86 for his work against nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The 2024 award was given to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, \u201cfor its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n

The recognition honoured the organisation\u2019s decades-long campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and preserve the testimonies of the survivors of the\u00a0US atomic bomb attacks<\/a>\u00a0on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.<\/p>\n

Disappointment for Trump<\/h2>\n

The lead-up to this year\u2019s award had been dominated by United States President Donald Trump\u2019s repeated self-aggrandising public statements that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

The committee took its final decision just before an Israel-Hamas ceasefire comes into effect in Gaza under the first phase of Trump\u2019s initiative to end the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what they\u2019re going to do, really, but I know this: that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months, and I\u2019ve stopped eight wars,\u201d Trump said on Thursday. \u201cSo that\u2019s never happened before, but they\u2019ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn\u2019t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The President was alluding to the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which saw him intervene with bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear sites, as well as conflicts and tensions of varying levels of intensity, not all of which classify as wars, between India and Pakistan, DR Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Nobel announcement,\u00a0experts on the award had said\u00a0Trump was very unlikely to win as his policies were seen as dismantling the international world order the Nobel committee cherishes.<\/p>\n

That did not stop Trump\u2019s cheerleaders from lobbying for a victory. Howard Lutnick, Trump\u2019s commerce secretary said in a post on X that Trump should \u201cundoubtedly\u201d receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on ending the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

And the president\u2019s son Eric, in an X post, asked people to retweet if they believed Trump deserved the prize. At the time of writing, the post had been retweeted 48,000 times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, a key opposition leader in Venezuela, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 for her struggle to promote democratic rights in her country. Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding in her country, was blocked by Venezuela\u2019s courts from running for president against President Nicolas Maduro in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}