Czech regret over sterilisation

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The Czech government has expressed regret over the illegal sterilisation of Roma women.

Measures were being introduced to stop the practice being repeated, said Human Rights Minister Michael Kocab.

Coercive sterilisation was allegedly used to curb the traditionally high fertility rate among the Roma.

The practice officially ended with the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1990, but rights groups say the last recorded case was as recent as 2003.

Mr Kocab said health facilities should make sure women gave their informed consent before they were sterilised.

The Czech Human Rights League said that the government expression of regret was insufficient, and demanded financial compensation for those women affected.

But government human rights commissioner Jan Litomisky said: "The government does not apologise to the women because it refuses to shoulder responsibility for individual mistakes that it by no means initiated."

He said the responsibility lay with individual doctors who performed the sterilisations, the Czech news agency CTK reported.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8375960.stm