The Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machadohas appealed this Sunday to European society and values to “liberate Venezuela” from the “criminal dictatorship” of the president Nicolas Maduro. The leader has appealed for Europe’s help to achieve a “moral reconstruction” of Venezuela, a “luminous” future, and has given as an example the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War during a speech recorded for the Forum on the Future of the EU that concludes this Sunday in Madrid.
“Europe, I know, will help more and more to liberate Venezuela. And Venezuela can also help renew that spirit of Europe,” he noted. “You, young Europeans, know what it means raise a nation from the ruins of war and transform that pain into peace. “Your continent did it and that is why Europe has an essential role, not only as an ally in this existential struggle, but also as a moral reference,” he argued.
For Machado, “Europe has to remind the world that Democracy is not a luxury or a past conceptit is a daily conquest.” “I promise you something. Venezuela will be free. And when it is, it will be a country where young people will want to live, never escape. Venezuela will be free and I will be honored to welcome you here with open arms,” she stressed.
Poverty “as a tool of control”
Machado has also criticized the Venezuelan Government because uses poverty as a “tool of social control”. “For many years, our people have faced a criminal dictatorship, a regime that has destroyed everything: institutions, corrupted justice, collapsed our infrastructure and economy, forcing millions to flee,” Machado stated. “But despite all this, Venezuela is standing. And that example of those who do not give up and a force that grows every day is the youth,” he stressed.
Along the same lines, the former opposition candidate in the last Venezuelan elections, held in July 2024, has also intervened in the forum and by videoconference. Edmundo González, who has denounced that “in Venezuela there is no democracy,” “it was destroyed.” “There is no rule of law. There is no freedom of expression. There are millions of compatriots who live in exile and thousands who are imprisoned for thinking differently,” he denounced. González, who lives in exile in Madrid, has highlighted that “every time a dictatorship falls, the cause of freedom throughout the world is strengthened.” The Venezuelan opposition leader has stated that “hacking indifference is the true challenge of this generation, because nothing strengthens authoritarians more than silence, apathy or false neutrality.”
