OSLO, Norway — During a speech on Wednesday, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, described the regime of Nicolás Maduro’s crimes against children in Venezuela.
The chair started his speech by naming “Samantha Sofía Hernández,” a 16-year-old girl whose mother has been demanding her freedom since Venezuelan authorities detained her on Nov. 19 in Caracas.
“She was taken from the home of her grandparents. Where she is now, we do not know. She is probably in one of the dictatorship’s detention centers. She may be with her father, who disappeared without a trace in January,” the chair said. “What had they done wrong? He brother was a soldier, but refused to follow the regime’s order to commit brutal acts against the population. For that defense, the entire family must be punished.”
The chair delivered the speech near a portrait of Maria Corina Machado, who remained in hiding. Her daughter Ana Corina Sosa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf at Oslo City Hall.
“Under this regime, children are not spared. More than 200 children were arrested after the elections in 2024. The United Nations documented their experience as follows, ‘Plastic bags pulled tight over their heads. Electric shocks to the genitals, blows to the body so brutal it hurt to breath, sexualized violence, cells so cold as to cause intense shivering, fouled drinking water teeming with insects, screams that no one came to stop. One boy lies in the dark whispering his mother’s name over and over.’”
The chair focused on the case of one of the 16-year-old boys who was released after enduring the beatings and the electric shocks.
“He could not hug his mother without pain shooting from his body,” the chair said. “For months, he jumped at every sound and barely slept. At night, he would wake with a jolt, convinced the soldiers were back to resume their attacks.”
The UN declared these to be crimes against humanity.
Watch part of the speech by Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
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