Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and exiled presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia said Thursday they were honoured to receive the European Union's top human rights prize for leading their country's pro-democracy struggle.
The EU parliament awarded the pair the bloc's prestigious Sakharov prize for leading the opposition to President Nicolas Maduro's iron-fisted rule.
The opposition accuses Maduro of stealing the July 28 presidential election.
Machado, 57, who was barred from running for president, campaigned instead for her stand-in Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, who the opposition claims handily beat Maduro.
In a statement on social media she said she was honored to win the Sakharov prize.
"This recognition is for every political prisoner, people who sought asylum or are exiled, and every citizen of our country who defends what they believe," she said.
Gonzalez Urrutia, who went into exile in Spain in September after being threatened with arrest in a sweeping post-election crackdown on the opposition, hailed Europe's "deep solidarity" with his country.
Writing on X, he said the award "embodies the deep solidarity of the peoples of Europe with the Venezuelan people and their struggle to recover democracy".
"The struggle has not finished," he added.
"The regime persists in blocking political change, committing more and more human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
"Democrats, within and outside Venezuela, must work together to have the Venezuelan people's sovereign mandate respected."
Machado has been in hiding for more than two months after also being threatened with arrest for accusing Maduro of fraud in the election.
Last week, she denied claims that she too had fled the country, insisting that she had remained behind to continue resisting the regime.
After the election, the opposition published its own tally of polling station-level results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia won two-thirds of votes cast.
Maduro claimed he won a third term fair and square, but did not published a detailed vote breakdown.
A former bus driver who was handpicked by Venezuela's late revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez to succeed him on his death from cancer in 2013, Maduro has cracked down hard on dissenters in recent years.
The United States, Europe and most Latin American states have refused to recognize his reelection.
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