This year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Maria Corina Machado, is reportedly still in Oslo, more than a week after Nobel events concluded. Oslo newspaper Aftenposten has reported that doctors discovered she’d broken a vertabrae during her dramatic trip from Venezuela, and treatment is pending.
Machado has publicly stated that she fully intends to return to her troubled homeland, to continue her fight for freedom and democracy. She said she needed a “health check” first, though, and then doctors at Oslo’s Ullevål University Hospital confirmed she was injured while fleeing Venezuela in a fishing boat under stormy conditions.
That had delayed her arrival in Oslo, but she arrived in time to visit Parliament, meet with the Norwegian prime minister and take part in various rituals with the Norwegian Nobel Committee who’d awarded her the Peace Prize. She also met cheering supporters and family members she hadn’t seen for a long time.
It was unclear when she would be leaving Norway, depending on the Norwegian doctors’ recommended treatment for her back injury. Her Peace Prize remains controversial, meanwhile, with activist Julian Assange suing the Nobel Foundation on the grounds its funds can’t be used to promote war. Machado has supported US President Donald Trump’s military offensive against Venezuela.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
