Peru Govt Doesn't Want Justice for Forcibly Sterilized Women, Feminists Say Not So Fast

From a village several hours away, Ines Condori trekked her way to Cusco, Peru’s bustling southeastern city. She needed a hospital check-up after the birth of her fourth child.

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Her "check-up" ended sordidly — a forced sterilization was included as part of the package.

She recalled seeing women splayed on the floor at the hospital.

"There were no stretchers. They were shouting, vomiting," Condori said. Given an injection, she said she woke up hours later in terrible pain.

The hospital staff told her she would no longer have children and would be "young again."

"To this day, I don't know what kind of surgery they did on me," she told Reuters.

In 1995, Condori became one of nearly 350,000 forcibly sterilized women in Peru under the regime of jailed former dictator Alberto Fujimori. His decade-long rule saw thousands of mostly poor, Indigenous, rural women have their autonomy and reproductive rights taken away during a campaign from 1995 to 2000.

This week, feminists in the country are striking back against a government decision to stop investigating the claims of more than 2,000 women who have given statements to Peruvian and international rights groups saying they suffered sterilization without being informed or consenting to the procedure.

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The government's public prosecutor had opened investigations into the forced sterilizations, first in 2009 and most recently last year.

But last week, the prosecutor opted to close its investigation into complaints by 77 women.

Demus, a Lima-based non-profit women's group, filed an appeal this week asking for the decision to be reversed. Demus Attorney Milton Campos argued in a video posted by the group that the government is denying these women the right to continue seeking justice.

While Fujimori is serving a 20-year prison sentence for human rights abuses and corruption charges during his 1990-2000 authoritarian rule, he was cleared in 2014 of any wrongdoing linked to the sterilization program.

Prosecutors have also concluded that three of Fujumori's health ministers cannot be held responsible for the program either.

"There are plenty of people involved in this matter who are still enjoying their freedom because they haven't been prosecuted," said Sandro Monteblanco, a Lima criminal attorney.

"Eventually, this too will be yet another horrendous occurrence in the long list of dark occurrences in this country that gets swept under the rug or simply becomes a couple of paragraphs in our history book," Monteblanco added.