The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize 2024 was awarded to the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado on Monday 30 September, at the opening of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Forced into hiding after Nicolas Maduro’s disputed re-election in July, and contacted by videoconference, the first Latin American winner of this prize dedicated it “to the millions of Venezuelans who, every day, embody Havel’s values and ideas - some without even realising it”.
She also spoke of the fate of Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate threatened with imprisonment and now a refugee in Spain.
Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner with 52% of the vote, but the National Electoral Council refused to make the polling station reports public.
Opposition scrutineers counted more than 60% of the votes for Edmundo González Urrutia.
“Today, our fight continues, because the truth persists until it prevails”, concluded Mrs Machado.
The other two finalists for the Václav Havel Prize 2024 were Azerbaijani activist Akif Gurbanov and Georgian feminist Babutsa Pataraia.
Present at the ceremony, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the 2022 laureate and Russian opposition leader who was freed in a prisoner swap last August, told the Parliamentary Assembly that the reason he was in Strasbourg on Monday was “because of sustained efforts by good people in democratic nations, including so many people in this Chamber that have proven stronger than any dictatorship can ever hope to be”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)