The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, forced to live in hiding in what has become a “brutal” state, the Nobel jury said.

Machado, who has lived in hiding for the past year, was honoured “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,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

“I am in shock,” the opposition leader could be heard saying in a video sent to AFP by her press team.

Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a “brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,” Fryd

See Full Page