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<font size=4><b>Women Sterilized Against Their Will in Peru Seek Justice,
Again <br><br>
<br>
</b></font><font size=3>Written by Ángel Páez <br>
Tuesday, 19 October 2010 13:40 <br>
</font><font size=1>
<a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2738-women-sterilised-against-their-will-in-peru-seek-justice-again" eudora="autourl">
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2738-women-sterilised-against-their-will-in-peru-seek-justice-again<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>(IPS) - Poor, rural, Quechua-speaking women in
the Peruvian province of Anta who were victims of a forced sterilisation
programme between 1996 and 2000 have filed a new lawsuit in their
continuing struggle for justice.<br><br>
In May 2009, Jaime Schwartz, the public prosecutor investigating the case
against four former health ministers of the Alberto Fujimori
administration (1990-2000), decided to shelve the investigation. He said
the case involved alleged crimes against the victims' life, body and
health, and manslaughter, and that the statute of limitations had
expired. <br><br>
But the plaintiffs in the case had brought accusations of genocide and
torture, which as crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation.
The attorney-general's office upheld Schwartz's decision, overruling the
complaint lodged against it by the victims and the human rights
organisations providing them with legal advice. <br><br>
Now the Women's Association of Forced Sterilisation Victims of Anta, a
mountainous province in the southern department of Cuzco, has decided to
combat impunity with a new strategy: it is presenting a new lawsuit
against those responsible for family planning policy in the last four
years of the Fujimori regime. <br><br>
The Association's approximately 100 members are rural women whose
testimonies have revealed the hidden side of the National Programme for
Reproductive Health and Family Planning, imposed by coercion and deceit
under the guise of an anti-poverty plan. <br><br>
Sabina Huillca, 41, told IPS: "I remember perfectly the day they
sterilised me against my will, because what they did to me made me suffer
ever since. It was August 24, 1996," she said, trying to keep her
voice calm. <br><br>
She is one of the witnesses who will testify before the justice
authorities against those who devised and implemented the programme.
<br><br>
"After giving birth to my fourth daughter, I went to the Izcuchaca
health centre to see the doctor. He told me not to have any more children
and to have voluntary surgical contraception (VSC)," she said.
<br><br>
"I told him 'No'. 'You're silly', he said, 'you will have more
children and you won't be able to raise them'." While she lay
resting on a bed, a nurse gave her an injection. "I didn't know, and
no one told me, that it was an anaesthetic," she said. <br><br>
"When I woke up, my hands and feet were tied to the bed with
bandages. I was immobilised. I could see them finishing off some
stitches. 'What have you done to me!'" I shouted. <br><br>
"'We're nearly done,' the doctor said, and I started to cry. 'I
don't want this, I don't want this!' I shouted in despair. But the damage
was already done," said Huillca, who was 28 years old at the time.
<br><br>
"Nada personal" (Nothing Personal), a 1998 report by human
rights lawyer and activist Giulia Tamayo, commissioned by the Peruvian
section of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of
Women's Rights (CLADEM), describes the coercive nature of the VSC
programme. <br><br>
The study documented for the first time the systematic use of
sterilisation practices that particularly targeted poor, indigenous,
rural women. <br><br>
As a result of the publication, Tamayo received threats from the
government. She had to leave the country and went to live in Spain, but
has now returned to Peru to advise the Anta Women's Association on the
new lawsuit. <br><br>
The Peruvian state has admitted that 300,000 sterilisations were
performed under the VSC programme. The ombudsman's office has collected
direct testimony from 2,074 women who were sterilised without their
consent between 1996 and 2000. <br><br>
"The power structures that protected the authors of criminal acts
are still in place, guaranteeing their impunity up to the present day.
This means that the rights of women who suffered from mass forced
sterilisation continue to be violated," Tamayo told IPS. <br><br>
In 2003, the Peruvian state signed a friendly settlement agreement before
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in the case of
Mamérita Mestanza, who died in 1998 as a result of a poorly performed
tubal ligation procedure done without her consent. <br><br>
The state acknowledged its responsibility, recognised the abuses
committed under the family planning programme, undertook to investigate
and bring to trial the government officials who devised and implemented
the campaign, and promised to pay reparations to Mestanza's family.
<br><br>
But the attorney-general's office dragged its feet on the promised
investigation, which made little progress before it was shelved by the
public prosecutor in 2009. Meanwhile Alejandro Aguinaga, one of the
accused, a former health minister and personal physician to Fujimori, was
elected to Congress in 2006 and is now vice president of the legislature.
<br><br>
Fujimori is in prison for 25 years, convicted of several charges of
corruption and human rights violations. <br><br>
The state's failure to carry out this part of the friendly agreement
"is prolonging the pain of thousands of victims, because the accused
are carrying on as respectable members of society when they really should
be called to account in the courts," said Tamayo, who is also a
researcher for the Spanish chapter of the global rights watchdog Amnesty
International. <br><br>
"This time, those responsible for the forced sterilisation plan will
be sued individually for crimes against humanity and torture," she
said. <br><br>
Each of the accused will also be charged "for war crimes, because
the coerced sterilisation was carried out in the context of the 1980-2000
armed conflict (between the military and leftwing guerrillas), when the
armed forces were used to threaten and terrorise" the civilian
population, Tamayo said. <br><br>
Specifying international crimes (which include crimes against humanity,
genocide, torture and war crimes) will allow "other countries to
prosecute the accused, if the Peruvian state continues to protect
them," she said. <br><br>
"The IACHR has already indicated that forced sterilisation is a
matter of international law," the rights activist said. <br><br>
Tamayo said the lawsuit will be brought by the victims in Anta, because
in that province "sterilisation was implemented door to door, the
health authorities were given 'quotas' of sterilised women that they were
required to meet, and all the victims belonged to the same indigenous
ethnic group." <br><br>
This shows that "those who designed the programme defined its
targets with abominable precision," Tamayo said. <br><br>
One of the first to take up the fight for justice in the case of coerced
sterilisations was the now famous Quechua-speaking lawmaker Hilaria Supa,
a native of Anta, one of whose daughters is a victim of the VSC
programme. <br><br>
"Since the operation, to this day, I have suffered because of what
was done to me by force," said Huillca, who lives in the rural
village of Huayllaccocha, where several other cases of forced
sterilisation have been documented. <br><br>
"They damaged me as a woman. After that I was not able to pick up my
small children, or work in the fields, which our livelihood depends on. I
can't even cook, because I get terrible pains," she said, describing
little-known consequences borne by the victims. <br><br>
"I have difficulty walking; my life is full of suffering.
Furthermore, in the community I am treated as second-rate, because in the
village a woman who does not work is very much looked down on," she
continued, no longer able to hide her sadness. <br><br>
"The worst of it all is that one of the doctors who damaged me for
life is still working in the Izcuchaca health centre," she said.
"Every time I see him I feel furious, because nothing has happened
to him."<br><br>
<br><br>
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