Venezuelan opposition activist María Corina Machado, Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Council of Europe

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the award this Monday Václav Havel of Human RightsAwarded each year by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It was his daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, who received the award on her mother’s behalf Nicolas is in hiding due to threats from Maduro’s Venezuelan regime,

“I deeply regret that I cannot travel,” Assembly President Theodoros Roussopoulos told Corina Machado, who joined by video call when announcing her name as the winner of the prize. It is the first time that the Council of Europe awards the prize to Václav Havel For someone from Latin America,

Since the organization first presented the award to Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatsky in 2013.

The opposition leader “highlighted the importance of the award to all those involved.” “They fight individually for freedom in Venezuela.” “The importance of this award is enormous, not only for me but for all those who fight together for freedom in Venezuela,” Corina Machado said before the Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The other two nominees of this edition were Akif Gurbanov, Azerbaijan political activist, Co-founder of the Democratic Initiative Institute (IDI) and the Third Republic Platform, arrested during a demonstration in March this year; And Babutsa Pataraiya, Georgian lawyer Who has been fighting against femicide for more than a decade and is the director of NGO Sapari.

Last year he was a journalist, activist and Turkish businessman, Osman KavalaJailed since 2017, who won a reward of 60,000 euros. In previous editions, it was won by Russian competitor Vladimir Kara-Murza (2022), activist for Uyghur minority rights Ilham Tohti (2019) or Yazidi Nadia Mourad (2016).

The Council of Europe, a body that is not part of the European Union, was established in 1949 to promote the continent’s integration, the rule of law and human rights. After World War II,