María Corina Machado wins the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Council of Europe

Caracas/Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won this Monday the Václav Havel prize for human rights awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

It was Ana Corina Sosa’s daughter who accepted the award on behalf of her mother, who is in hiding due to threats from the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela.

“I am deeply sorry that you cannot travel,” Assembly President Theodoros Roussopoulos told Corina Machado, who joined via video conference, when he announced her name as the award winner.

It is the first time that the Council of Europe has awarded the Václav Havel Prize to someone from Latin America

It is the first time the Council of Europe has awarded the Václav Havel Prize to someone from Latin America, after the organization first presented the award in 2013 to Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatski.

The other two candidates of this edition were Akif Gurbanov, a political activist from Azerbaijan, co-founder of the Institute for Democratic Initiative (IDI) and the Third Republic Platform, who was arrested in March this year during a demonstration. and Babutsa Pataraia, a Georgian lawyer who has been fighting against femicide for more than a decade and director of the NGO Sapari.

Last year it was Turkish journalist, activist and businessman, Osman Kavala, imprisoned since 2017, who won the prize worth 60,000 euros.

In previous editions, Russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza (2022), Uighur minority rights activist Ilham Tohti (2019) or Yazidi Nadia Mourad (2016) won.

The Council of Europe, an organization that is not part of the European Union, was founded in 1949 to promote the continent’s integration, the rule of law and human rights, after the Second World War.

The award comes a day after Venezuela’s opposition denounced this Sunday the arrest of two members of the anti-Chavista leader’s security team, including her “chief of protection,” Milciades Ávila, who was already jailed on December 17. July and was released 36 hours later, on bail.

“Milciades Ávila and Edwin Moya, members of María Corina Machado’s security team, were kidnapped this weekend by members of the regime’s repressive forces,” said the Human Rights Committee of the Vente Venezuela (VV) party, a group led by Machado. social network

The committee said it does not know where Ávila and Moya are, so it demanded to know their whereabouts and their “immediate freedom.”

The committee said it does not know where Ávila and Moya are, so it has asked for their whereabouts and their “immediate freedom.”

“This new attack is part of the false dossier compiled by the ruling party against all political dissent and it comes right after the recent statements by the representatives of the regime itself about Machado’s supposed flight from the country,” he added.

He argued that this is “once again, a misinformation scenario to further surround the leader and demoralize the country.”

Meanwhile, the president of the Primero Justicia (PJ) political party, María Beatriz Martínez, said these arrests do not change “the truth they are trying to silence.”

“Two months ago we won the election cleanly, the world knows it and with repression and persecution, (Nicolás) Maduro only manages to sink further,” he added in the July 28 presidential election to the president.

Likewise, former deputy Juan Pablo Guanipa said, on the same social network, that Ávila and Moya are “two Venezuelans devoted to their country who should not be kidnapped for even a second.”

“I’m telling you today, the alleged queen has run out of bees and is packing Gucci bags (…) she knows what I’m talking about”

On July 17, Ávila was arrested at his home, according to Vente Venezuela.

Machado’s security chief was released after more than 36 hours in custody, with a “precautionary order to appear in court” every 30 days, according to information from the former congressman.

On Saturday, Maduro assured that Machado was preparing to leave the Caribbean nation because – he said – the anti-Chavistas “are cowards”.

“I’m telling you today, the alleged queen is out of bee and she’s packing Gucci bags (…) she knows what I’m talking about and ‘La Sayona’ (referring to Machado) is getting ready to go, man, too. I say it, they are cowards,” the president said at the demonstration held to celebrate his controversial re-election in the state of La Guaira (north).