FORCED STERILIZATION IS
EVIL!
Women
Forcibly Sterilized in Peru
By Concerned Women for
America | 2/24/1998
Washington, D.C. — A government campaign in Peru
has been forcibly sterilizing Peruvian women — under the USAID banner — since
1996. At a joint Concerned Women for America/Population Research
Institute media briefing today, two Peruvian peasant women spoke through an
interpreter of their experience with the €family planners—who forcibly
sterilized them — one was surprised to find she has been sterilized after a
c-section, and another was harassed and coerced into accepting the operation.
Dr. Hector Chavez Espinoza, President of the Peruvian Medical Association,
testified to the mandatory sterilization quotas set for Peruvian doctors.
CWA President Carmen Pate said, ”Often these
sterilizations are performed in filthy conditions without the woman's consent
or knowledge, inviting infections and even death. Women have been harassed,
coerced, bargained with, and lied to, just so doctors and health workers can
meet their mandatory sterilization quotas to appease the ”family planners.“
There is not a woman in America who should be silent.”
U.S. taxpayer dollars should not be used in such
horrific population control activities. This is an offense, not just to
women's rights, but to human rights. USAID's idea of €family planning—has
nothing to do with legitimate birth control decisions made between a married,
monogamous couple. It has everything to do with population control. The Paul
Amendment, which will be offered to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill
this year, would prevent American taxpayer dollars from going to any and all
population control activities overseas.
“We have more than enough evidence to show
”beyond a reasonable doubt“ that USAID money is going to these horrific
activities. The burden of proof is now on them. Let them prove to us, to
Congress, and to America that they are not directly funding these campaigns,
or indirectly funding then through the non-governmental organizations (NGO's)
who are neck-deep in these sterilizations. I wholeheartedly believe that USAID
is involved in the funding, and it must stop.“
Following is a summary of one woman's story—Juana
Gutierrez Chero....
Juana died on June 20, 1997, five to seven
hours after undergoing a tubal ligation. Many aspects of her death remain
shrouded, but one fact stands out clearly: Juana feared the operation that
killed her; she didn't want to have it; she hid in a desperate attempt to
evade those who finally forced it upon her. She died in her mid-twenties
— her life the price of the sterilization that brings the Peruvian
population control program one step closer to its quota.
SOURCE
Forced Sterilization in Slovakia
By Asjylyn Loder
WEnews correspondent | 03/04/03
At least 110 Romani women in eastern Slovakia
have been subjected to involuntary sterilization says a recent report by
investigators from women's rights organizations in New York and Slovakia.
Romani
women in eastern Slovakia have been subject to at least 110 forced and coerced
sterilizations in government health care facilities since the fall of
communism in 1989, according to a recent report by human rights investigators
in New York and Slovakia. The report also says that Romani women have
experienced physical and verbal abuse as well as segregated health care
services, showing a pattern of ethnic bias in Slovak medical facilities.
Since the release of the report on Jan. 28, 2003,
Slovak police have harassed some Romani women who had reported that they had
been sterilized without their consent. The report's authors, based in Slovakia
and New York, have had their records subpoenaed and have been subject to
interrogations and threatened with criminal charges.
The report, "Body and Soul: Forced Sterilization
and Other Assaults on Roma Reproductive Freedom," is based on 230 in-depth
interviews conducted in 40 Roma settlements in eastern Slovakia, according to
the report's authors, the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights
(formerly the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy) and the Centre for Civil
and Human Rights in Kosice, a Slovak non-governmental organization.
"Slovak health care providers throughout eastern
Slovakia are complicit in the illegal and unethical practice of sterilizing
Romani women without their informed consent," the report stated. "Physical and
verbal abuse driven by racial hatred taints the Slovak health care system."
In response to the report, the government office
in charge of human rights and minority affairs promised an investigation into
the "unknown perpetrator," meaning the doctors who performed the
sterilizations and announced criminal charges against authors of the report.
The report's authors face possible charges of filing a false report. If their
report proves true, they face charges of failing to notify the authorities of
criminal activity.
"They're denying women their right to legal
redress by intimidating them," said Christina Zampas, the Center for
Reproductive Rights' legal advisor for Europe.
The report quoted one woman saying that, during a
Caesarean section, when she was falling asleep, "a nurse came and took my hand
in hers and with it she signed something." She added, "I do not know what it
was. I could not check because I cannot read. I only know how to sign my
name," the woman said. "When I was released from the hospital, I was only told
that I would not have any more children."
A report last month by the United Nations
Development Fund found that the living conditions of Europe's Roma population
are "closer to levels in sub-Saharan Africa than those for other Europeans."
Nazi Germany targeted Europe's Roma, also known
as Gypsies, for extermination during the Holocaust. Roma still face
discrimination in health care, education, law enforcement and political
representation. Under communism, Romani women were paid bribes to undergo
sterilization.
Police and Government Harassment Has Increased
as a Result of the Report
After being interrogated by police, at least one
Romani woman has recanted her story that she was sterilized without her
consent, said Barbora Bukovska, executive director of the Counseling Center
for Citizenship, Civil and Human Rights, and co-author of the report.
The police summoned Bukovska for an
interrogation, which she declined, she said. They have also demanded the
center's records on women who spoke to human rights investigators on the
condition of confidentiality.
"They came today and served papers that I give
them the list of women," she said in a recent telephone interview from her
office, "but we didn't give it to them."
The hospitals named in the report, many of them
government-run facilities, have not been as considerate of the women's
privacy.
Bukovska said that some hospitals where alleged
abuses took place have provided police with lists of women who have had
sterilizations there. The police have also interrogated women named in news
reports, Bukovska said. The release of the report received extensive media
attention in Slovakia and throughout Europe.
Human rights workers in Slovakia state that
police officers have rounded up Romani women and told them that filing false
reports carries a three year prison sentence.
"They come to the settlement, and they stand in
the middle of the settlement, and they would call out these women that they
had on the list, and they would put them in police cars and take them to the
police station," Bukovska said.
Bukovska fears that police are interviewing women
who underwent voluntary sterilizations to offset and discredit reports of
involuntary sterilization.
The Slovakian center represents two women in a
complaint of forcible sterilization against a government-run hospital in the
eastern town of Krompachy. Romani women visiting the Krompachy hospital have
been harassed by nurses and doctors angered by the charges, said Zampas and
Bukovska.
The hospital has charged the Center for
Reproductive Rights with libel, Agence-France Presse reported. But the center
has not been formally notified of these charges, a spokesperson said last
week. Bukovska fears that hospitals named in the report may destroy medical
records of Romani women who may have been forcibly sterilized. In the past,
charges against doctors by Romani women have been dismissed.
Slovakia is due to join the European Union in
2004. "Overshadowing this historic moment, however, is the Slovak government's
continued denial of the human rights of minority Romani women," the report
said. In mid-February, Jan Marinus Wiersma, the European Union's rapporteur
for Slovakia, used a scheduled three-day visit to urge the Slovakian
government to openly address the charges.
Slovakia's official census in 2001 reported
almost 90,000 Roma. But Minority Rights Group International, a London-based
non-governmental organization, estimated the number of Roma in Slovakia at
480,000 to 520,000, or between 9 percent and 10 percent of Slovakia's
population, making the Roma the second largest minority in Slovakia, according
the United Nations.
Asjylyn Loder is a freelance writer in New
York.
SOURCE
China, North Korea
— Forced Abortions
Bush Administration Report Shows
Forced Abortions in China, North Korea
Washington, DC -- Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell presented the annual report, "The Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices for 2002," on conditions in 196 countries. Powell said the
report reflects "the steadfast commitment of the United States to advance
internationally agreed human rights principles worldwide."
The report notes that "The People's Republic of
China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP
or Party) is the paramount source of power." The Chinese government refused
permission for independent nongovernmental organizations to monitor human
rights conditions and lists as problems, "violence against women" which
includes "imposition of a birth limitation policy coercive in nature that
resulted in instances of forced abortion and forced sterilization."
The report says moreover that the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) worked "closely" with population control officials in
China in 32 counties which employed coercive methods of population control.
Despite the repeated denials of UNFPA the U.S. report states that these
counties that worked with UNFPA employed "birth limitation policy, including
the requirement that couples employ effective birth control methods, and
enforced it through other means, such as social compensation fees."
Cooperation with such coercive population control programs resulted in the
denial of U.S. funds to UNFPA.
The report also reveals a grim picture in North
Korea where the report says, "Female prisoners underwent forced abortions, and
in other cases babies reportedly were killed upon birth in prisons."
The new Human Rights Reports are found at
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/
SOURCE
