Amnesty urges Peru's Humala to find forced sterilization victims
Thu Jul 23, 2015 2:40pm EDT
Amnesty urges Peru's Humala to find forced sterilization victims
LIMA
Human rights group Amnesty International pressed Peruvian President Ollanta Humala on Thursday to track down scores of poor Andean women who might have been forcibly sterilized by government doctors in the late 1990s.
As a first step toward compensation, the group said Humala should create a list of potential victims of former President Alberto Fujimori's controversial birth control program before he leaves office in a year.
Amnesty International made the demand as it launched a global Against Her Will campaign to compensate victims of forced sterilizations. The move comes ahead of Peru's presidential elections next year, when Fujimori's daughter is expected to make her second bid for the country's top job.
Fujimori, in jail for corruption and human rights crimes, has said the operations on some 300,000 women were consensual and aimed at reducing poverty in the highlands. Last year Fujimori was cleared of wrongdoing linked to the program. But more than 2,000 women have said they were threatened or tricked into being sterilized, according to a recently reopened inquiry in the attorney general's office.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/us-peru-rights-women-idUSKCN0PX2AZ20150723
