The European Parliament on Thursday awarded the European Union’s Sakharov Rights Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and her ally, former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
They won the prestigious award for their fight for democracy under the iron-fisted rule of President Nicolas Maduro.
Machado, 57, played a key role in Venezuela’s July presidential election. Although authorities declared Maduro the winner, the opposition believes its candidate Gonzalez Urrutia won.
Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain in September.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said the two figures represented “all Venezuelans inside and outside the country who are fighting to restore freedom and democracy,” when announcing the award. at the Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
“Edmundo and Maria continued to fight for a just, free and peaceful transition of power and fearlessly defended those values so dear to millions of Venezuelans and to this Parliament: justice, democracy and the rule of law,” added Metsola.
“This Parliament stands with the Venezuelan people and with Maria and Edmundo in their fight for the democratic future of their country,” Metsola said.
“We are convinced that Venezuela and democracy will ultimately prevail,” she added.
An awards ceremony will take place in Strasbourg in December. The winner receives a prize of $54,000.
Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia were nominated for the award by the center-right European People’s Party, the largest political group in the European Parliament.
The other two finalists were imprisoned Azerbaijani activist Gubad Ibadoghlu – supported by the Greens – and Israeli and Palestinian organizations working together for peace, proposed by the Socialists and Democrats group.
Metsola paid tribute to the finalists, saying they “all courageously defend human rights and freedom of thought in the face of unimaginable challenges.”
She said Ibadoghlu’s health – under house arrest – was currently “deteriorating significantly” and called on “the Azerbaijani authorities to drop all charges against Dr Ibadoghlu and lift his travel ban”.
Far-right lawmakers had nominated US tech billionaire Elon Musk as a champion of “free speech”, but their eyebrow-raising choice was not accepted.
Named after Soviet physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov, previous recipients of the prize include South African Nelson Mandela and the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
For Machado, this is her second prize in a few months since she won the top European rights prize awarded by the Council of Europe, which is not an EU institution.
