MIAMI - Local Norwegian news broadcaster, NRK, reports Venezuelan opposition leader and newly inducted Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, will not attend the award ceremony in Oslo on Wednesday morning, citing security concerns for Machado's safety.
The Nobel Prize committee issued a statement early Tuesday that a press conference with Machado had been suspended as her whereabouts were unknown following her assumed departure from Venezuela.
Shortly after, the committee announced that the press conference had been scrapped altogether.
Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said last month that the opposition leader would be considered a "fugitive" if she travelled to Norway to accept the prize.
Tensions surrounding the event have been boiling in recent hours as supporters of Machado, as well as loyalists of the Maduro government in Venezuela, descended on the location where the ceremony was to be held in Oslo.
Critics of Machado began protesting the opposition figure as a legitimate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, calling Machado a "war monger" over her vocal support of a U.S. intervention into Venezuela in an effort to displace the Maduro government.
Maduro loyalists strolled the quiet streets of central Oslo clad in red banners with portraits of 'Che' Guevara plastered on them, and post-boards with the words: "HANDS OFF VENEZUELA" written across to emit a warning to any potential U.S. strike on the Venezuelan homeland.
Machado, 58, and a principal leader of the Venezuelan opposition movement, has spearheaded a political crusade that has spanned more than 15 years against the Chávez-Maduro government, advocating for her nation's return to its more democratic values.
Several Latin American heads of state, including Argentina's Javier Milei and Ecuador's Daniel Noboa, made trips to the Scandinavian nation in anticipation of Machado's award ceremony as a show of Latin American solidarity for the region's democratic values.
The ceremony was also prepared to be the meeting ground for a family reunion of three generations of the Machado family, after years of separation due to María Corina's struggle against political persecution.
