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The first cases of forced sterilizations took place 22 years ago when the procedure was performed on Quechua-speaking women.
The Public Prosecutor's Office on Monday supported the charges against Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) for the forced sterilizations of at least 1,300 Indigenous women.
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Besides Fujimori, the imputations include former Health Ministers Marino Costa, Eduardo Yong, Alejandro Aguinaga, and the ex-officials Ulises Aguilar and Segundo Aliaga.
The accusations are for the crime of "serious injuries followed by death" against five women and serious injuries against the victims.
The Public Prosecutor's Office claims that the first cases of forced sterilizations took place 22 years ago when the procedure was performed on 1,307 Quechua-speaking women in Ayacucho, Cusco, Piura, and other regions.
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The forced sterilizations were carried out as part of the National Program of Reproductive Health and Family Planning (1996-2000) whose purpose was to apply the surgical intervention as a contraceptive method.
One of the first cases to be publicly denounced was that of Victoria Vigo, an Indigenous woman who underwent contraceptive surgery without her consent when she went to the Piura Hospital to give birth to her third child.
After several proceedings, the Prosecutor's Office decided to include Fujimori and his ex-ministers in the investigations in 2013. A formal accusation was filed against them in November 2018.
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