Protest in Oslo Denounces Nobel Peace Prize for Right-Wing Machado

As President Donald Trump issued new threats of a possible ground invasion in Venezuela, protesters gathered outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on Tuesday to protest the awarding of the prestigious peace prize to right-wing opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whom they described as an ally to US regime change efforts.

“This year’s Nobel Prize winner has not distanced herself from the interventions and the attacks we are seeing in the Caribbean, and we are stating that this clearly breaks with Alfred Nobel’s will," said Lina Alvarez Reyes, the information adviser for the Norwegian Solidarity Committee for Latin America, one of the groups that organized the protests.

Machado's daughter delivered a speech accepting the award on her behalf on Wednesday. The 58-year-old engineer was unable to attend the ceremony in person due to a decade-long travel ban imposed by Venezuelan authorities under the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Via her daughter, Machado said that receiving the award "reminds the world that democracy is essential to peace... And more than anything, what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey: that to have a democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom."

But the protesters who gathered outside the previous day argue that Machado—who dedicated her acceptance of the award in part to Trump and has reportedly worked behind the scenes to pressure Washington to ramp up military and financial pressure on Venezuela—is not a beacon of democracy, but a tool of imperialist control.

As Venezuelan-American activist Michelle Ellner wrote in Common Dreams in October after Machado received the award:

She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.

She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narco-trafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.

She pushed for the US sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.

The protesters outside the Nobel Institute on Tuesday felt similarly: "No peace prize for warmongers," read one banner. "US hands off Latin America," read another.

The protest came on the same day Trump told reporters that an attack on the mainland of Venezuela was coming soon: “We’re gonna hit ‘em on land very soon, too,” the president said after months of extrajudicial bombings of vessels in the Caribbean that the administration has alleged with scant evidence are carrying drugs.

On the same day that Machado received the award in absentia, US warplanes were seen circling over the Gulf of Venezuela. Later, in what Bloomberg described as a "serious escalation," the US seized an oil tanker off the nation's coast.