Czech government to compensate forced sterilization victims by 2015

The Czech government is planning to compensate victims of forced sterilization by 2015, the news agency ČTK reported quoting the government’s response to the UN Committee for Human Rights.

The cabinet says it will next year put forward legislation that should comprehensively address compensation and other claims of the victims towards the state. In 2004, several dozen mainly Romany women approached the authorities with complaints there were forcibly sterilized. The government apologized to the victims in 2007 but the issue of compensation has not since been resolved. The UN committee has repeatedly criticized the Czech Republic for its failure to compensate the women as well as other issues including the wide-spread discrimination and segregation of Romanies.

Background: Between 1971 and 1991 in Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic and Slovakia, the “reduction of the Roma population” through surgical sterilization, performed without the knowledge of the women themselves, was a widespread governmental practice. The sterilization would be performed on Romani women without their knowledge during Caesarean sections or abortions. Some of the victims claim that they were made to sign documents without understanding their content. By signing these documents, they involuntarily authorized the hospital to sterilize them. In exchange, they sometimes were offered financial compensation or material benefits like furniture from Social Services – though it was not explicitly stated what this compensation was for. The justification for sterilization practices according to the stakeholders was “high, unhealthy” reproduction.

source: http://romediafoundation.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/forced-sterilization-of-romani-women-a-persisting-human-rights-violation/

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