Forced sterilization of indigenous case re-opened in Peru

The investigation into the forced sterilization of 300,000 indigenous Peruvian women is being re-opened, according to the Public Ministry of Peru. This follow-up effort was announced Jan. 7 and will seek out the program's administrators. It had been part of the larger case against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who is facing other criminal counts. Fujimori is awaiting the final disposition of his case in which he is being charged with kidnapping as well as ordering two massacres that resulted in the deaths of 25 people. If convicted he faces up to 30 years in prison. The original charges against him involved other human rights violations including his knowing supervision of the forced sterilization of indigenous women. The so-called "Voluntary Surgical Contraception" Program was enacted between 1997 and 2000. After hundreds of women started registering complaints during that time period and international pressure started to mount, the Peruvian Congress convened their own investigation which showed that most of the women were tricked or forced into the procedure, and that at least two women died as a result of the operations. Peru's Health Ministry issued a public apology to the country in 2002–after the case had received international attention–at which point investigators were asserting that former President Fujimori knew about the coercion and threats. "…the forced sterilizations focused on poor, indigenous, Quechua-speaking and Aymara women," said women's rights advocate Maria Esther Mogollon. She is a member of MAM Fundacional, the women's rights organization that helped a group of victims present their case to federal authorities. "The total number came to be 300,000 women and 22,000 men (who received vasectomies). … the majority of whom did not sign informed consent statements and were also subjected to threats, coercion and other violations. "Now, the district attorney has re-opened the case and we hope that after so many years they give us a response or result," Mogollon said. The federal attorney assigned to the case is Special Prosecutor of Human Rights Violations Jaime Schwartz Azpur. According to press statements issued by the government, Azpur will investigate all responsible for the crimes, and he has been authorized to file charges of genocide, torture and other criminal counts. The case that is considered emblematic by activists and attorneys was that of Maria Mamerita Mestanza, who underwent the sterilization procedure against her will, and died soon afterwards in 1998 as a result of complications from the surgery. According to a MAM Fundacional press release, "…the doors of Peruvian justice were closed to their efforts," and the case was then presented in 1999 to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by a team of activists including the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights, the Peru-based women's rights group DEMUS, the Peruvian national human rights organization known as APRODEH and the Center for Justice and International Law. This legal effort was based on information gathered by Peruvian attorney Giulia Tamayo about the Voluntary Surgical Contraception Program. (During the time of her investigation, Tamayo sought protection from Amnesty International because of threats on her life.) Four years later, in 2003, the Peruvian government agreed to pay $109,000 to Mestanza's family. However, there were many other victims of the VSC program who have not received any compensation or recognition for their ordeal. MAM Fundacional also gathered depositions from 12 of the women who underwent the procedure, all of whom are indigenous and from Anta province. The experience of Dolores Quispe Vasquez was similar to the anonymous accounts later publicized in the press. She presented the following testimony to the Human Rights Committee of the Peruvian Congress in 2001. "They came for me many times, trying to convince me to have the operation. They tried to make my husband sign a paper and they told him it would make me well. But as he was illiterate, he didn't know what the document said. Then they threatened my husband that if he didn't take me to the clinic the police would take him to prison. Out of fear my husband asked me to go." In her account Vasquez said she was still suffering, didn't have enough energy to work, and that she couldn't walk due to pain. Other statements gathered by MAM Fundacional were similar and included descriptions of being tied to a bed for surgery. One woman, Florencia Huayallas Vasquez, said she tried to escape but "…the nurses pushed me down on the floor and tied my hands" and that there were "other women on the floor with me" who had been treated the same way. While the women of Anta and many other towns are still waiting for justice, Mogollon said there were some positive developments that came out of the ordeal. "The good part of this is that now the women of Cusco have formed the Association of Women Affected by Forced Sterilizations, so that they can fight on their own behalf, with their own voices," she said. "And we have given them human rights training although money is always a problem." In the meantime the new official investigation has begun and, according to a number of sources, entities outside of Peru could be examined, including the United Nations Development Fund and the United States Agency for International Development.