Peru Victims Expose More Fujimori Era Forced Sterilizations
Peru Victims Expose More Fujimori Era Forced Sterilizations
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Representatives of Peruvian women's groups for victims of forced sterilization shout slogans after a meeting on Dec. 10, 2015.
Published 4 March 2016 (6 hours 46 minutes ago)
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Testimonies from victims of Peru’s forced sterilization campaign show that women’s human rights were violated at the government orders.
The tragic details of cases of forced sterilization have come to light in Peru as victims in the northern region of San Martin spoke out for the first time in grisly interviews with local media published on Friday. Testimonies of women who were sterilized against their will under the regime of former dictator Alberto Fujimori demonstrate that forced sterilization was widespread as a systematic policy and not a matter of isolated incidents.
Victims report being tricked and lied to by medical professionals to be forcibly sterilized by the thousands. Women from poor, Indigenous communities with multiple children were disproportionately targeted by the state campaign directed from the capital Lima.
“I told them several times no, I didn’t want it, that I was pregnant, but they insisted. ‘It’s the government’s order,’ they told me,” Felipa Guerra Martinez, a victim of forced sterilization in the 1990’s, told the Peruvian daily La Republica. “Then they told me they were just going to a pregnancy check-up. But it was a hoax.”
. . .
Over 270,000 women, mostly Indigenous from rural areas, were sterilized in Peru between 1995 and 2000. Investigations into widespread allegations opened in 2003, but has been repeatedly stalled under official claims of lack of evidence.
Fujimori, who oversaw the state policy, has always claimed that the women were sterilized voluntarily.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Peru-Victims-Expose-More-Fujimori-Era-Forced-Sterilizations-20160304-0020.html