STRASBOURG, France (EFE).— The opposition leader María Corina Machado yesterday won the Václav Havel prize from the Council of Europe for “denouncing human rights abuses in her country and defending democracy and the rule of law.”
The Parliamentary Assembly of this institution, which is not part of the European Union and which was founded in 1949 to integrate the continent and defend democracy after the Second World War, thus granted for the first time to a Hispanic American the award with which each year to human rights defenders.
“The importance of this award is immense not only for me but for all those who fight together for the cause of freedom in Venezuela,” said Corina Machado, in a videoconference message, since being in hiding she could not attend. Strasbourg to collect the decoration.
It was her daughter Ana Corina Sosa who collected the award on her behalf at the Council of Europe Assembly.
Corina Machado pointed out that Václav Havel, leader during the Prague Spring of 1968 and first president of the Czechoslovak Republic after the fall of communism, “understood that there can be no political solution to a totalitarian regime (…) unless, above all, everything, its effects on daily life will be neutralized!”
The opposition leader showed her commitment to “continue fighting alongside the Venezuelan people.”
“I am convinced that it is the right thing to do, that it is my role, and that is why they chose me as their leader for this stage of struggle,” said the Venezuelan, who regretted that Edmundo González Urrutia was “forced into exile in Spain” since last day 8.
Nominees
The other two nominees for the award were Akif Gurbanov, a political activist from Azerbaijan, co-founder of the Institute of Democratic Initiative (IDI) and the Third Republic Platform, arrested last March during a demonstration, and Babutsa Pataraia, a Georgian lawyer with more than a decade fight against feminicide and director of the NGO Sapari.
“If Europe or in this case the Council of Europe really wants to play a geopolitical role against the great powers, the United States against China and India (…), we have to take steps with other regions of the world that share these values . The one that is Latin America the most,” Spanish social democratic senator Antonio Gutiérrez Limones told EFE, about the fact that for the first time the Václav Havel prize is awarded to someone from Latin America.
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