By Ellis Cortez
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
LIMA, Peru – Peruvian prosecutors have decided not to file criminal charges against former President Alberto Fujimori or any of his ministers over a 1990s sterilization program under which thousands of women say they were forcibly sterilized.
Prosecutor Marco Guzman said there were no crimes against humanity committed by Fujimori’s government and decided to close the case. Guzman found no evidence to support claims that hundreds of mostly poor and indigenous men and women were sterilized against their will. “The women would come to the clinic, agree to the procedure, and undergo sterilization. That was the regular, normal process,” he concluded.
Human rights groups do not agree with the decision and are saying they will appeal. They allege that sterilization was forced upon more than 2,000 women under Fujimori’s government in an attempt to reduce poverty by lowering the birthrate. The campaign had the backing of international donors including the United Nations Population Fund, Japan and the United States, as well as anti-abortion and feminist organizations.
Activists say that besides being forced, the sterilizations were often carried out in unsanitary conditions.
An independent congressional commission stated that the government of President Fujimori had sterilized 346,219 women and 24,535 men during his terms in office between 1990 and 2000. The Fujimori government has always maintained all operations were consensual.
Hundreds of people, some of them illiterate, said they were forced to undergo operations and not told they could have refused. Some women say they were deceived, threatened with jail, bribed with food parcels, and otherwise pressured into the operations to meet program quotas.
A Peruvian feminist organization, Demus, condemned the decision, saying in a statement: “The program was a public policy that promoted the sterilization of thousands of women in the country, especially in rural areas, who by deception and blackmail were deprived of their reproductive capacities.”
The original investigation into allegations of forced sterilization was archived in 2009, but prosecutors reopened the investigation again in 2011 at the urging of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, is now in prison serving four concurrent sentences for corruption, authorizing death squads, and human rights abuses. The longest is 25 years.
For more information please see:
The Boston Globe – Fujimori cleared in Peru sterilization case – 26 January 2014
CNN – Peru will not prosecute former President over sterilization campaign – 25 January 2014
BBC – Peru closes forced sterilisation probe and clears ex-President Alberto Fujimori – 24 January 2014
Fox News –Peru’s Fujimori spared prosecution for 1990s sterilization program – 24 January 2014
