The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela's opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, a "unifying" figure in what has become a "brutal" state, the Nobel jury said.
Machado, who has lived in hiding for the past year, was honored "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 58-year-old opposition leader could be heard saying in a video sent to media by her press team.
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