WUNRN
PERU - PROSECUTION OF FORCED
STERILISATIONS STILL POSSIBLE
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Shelving the case of the forced sterilisations of more than 2,000 women in
On Jan. 24,
prosecutor Marco Guzmán announced an end to the investigation of forced
sterilisations carried out in
"The doors were padlocked. They carried me off on
a stretcher, tied my feet and cut me.” -- Micaela Flores
“They took us in trucks. We got in quite innocently
and contentedly. But then we heard screams and I ran… The doors were padlocked.
They carried me off on a stretcher, tied my feet and cut me,” Micaela Flores,
then a mother of seven from Anta province in the southern region of
On that occasion about 30 women went to the health
centre, duped by a campaign offering general check-ups, she said.
Guzmán has decided to prosecute only health personnel
in the northern department of Cajamarca. The sterilisations were part of the
Voluntary Surgical Contraception Programme (AQV – Anticoncepción Quirúrgica
Voluntaria), created by Fujimori and his government to bring about a drastic
reduction in the birth rate in the poorest parts of the country, especially
among rural Quechua-speaking women.
Guzmán, as head of the second supraprovincial
prosecutor’s office, took over the case in July 2013 after the investigation
was reopened in November 2012.
There are currently 142 volumes of evidence in this
longstanding case. In May 2009 the prosecution shelved the probe into the
former ministers and other officials for the first time, in spite of repeated
urging for its completion from the inter-American human rights system.
In 2003, the Peruvian state signed a friendly
settlement agreement before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) in the case of Mamérita Mestanza, who died in 1998 as a result of a
poorly performed tubal ligation procedure done without her consent.
The government promised to pay an indemnity to her
family and investigate and bring to trial the government officials who devised
and implemented the forced sterilisation campaign.
After years of delays and foot-dragging, human rights
organisations had their hopes raised when Guzmán showed interest in
investigating Fujimori’s command responsibility for the generalised, systematic
practice of sterilisations.
In late November the prosecutor said there were
“indications of the alleged participation of Alberto Fujimori in the crimes,”
and expanded the investigation into the cases of Mestanza and others.
Rossy Salazar, a lawyer with the women’s rights
organisation DEMUS who is representing the victims, told IPS that this
statement by the prosecutor appears on page 60277 of the file as part of a
report on the case addressed to Víctor Cubas, the prosecutor who coordinates
all human rights cases.
In an interview with IPS, Guzmán acknowledged having
said “there were indications that Fujimori had participated.” At that point he
had interviewed over 500 victims, mainly in the northwestern department of
Guzmán was also in possession of evidence that the
programme had targets, incentives, and even sanctions for personnel who did not
fulfill sterilisation quotas, according to documents obtained by government
agencies that investigated the facts of the case.
DEMUS invoked these official documents in an appeal
against the prosecutor’s decision to shelve the case, which it presented Jan.
28 before the Office of the Public Prosecutor.
The appeal refers to four letters from the former
health minister, Marino Costa, to Fujimori in 1997. In one document the
minister reports to the president on the increased numbers of AQV operations
performed and says “by the end of 1997 our total production should be fairly
close to the target.”
IPS asked Guzmán: “After determining in November that
there were indications of Fujimori’s participation, why did you absolve him
from responsibility so soon afterwards?”
“In order to examine him I had to interrogate him. I
went to interrogate Fujimori and he answered some questions, but not others.
For some he invoked the right to silence. Then his defence lawyer gave me a
number of documents. This was important because Fujimori had never been
questioned about this case before,” he said.
Fujimori’s interrogation on Jan. 15 in the Barbadillo
prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses, lasted
less than three hours. One week later, Guzmán closed the case against the
ex-president.
“Was your interview with Fujimori decisive for
determining whether he participated in the crimes?” persisted IPS.
“It was taken into consideration, but it was not
decisive. The decisive thing is the legal package I have to apply… There is no
legal support for imputing guilt,” Guzmán said.
The prosecutor argued that Peruvian law does not
provide for the crime of forced sterilisation, and therefore there is no legal
support. In his decision he said the victims’ complaints would not be classed
as crimes against humanity, which refer to generalised or systematic attacks on
a civilian population and have no statute of limitation.
In international terms, the Rome Statute, which
established the International Criminal Court, does recognise the crime of
forced sterilisation. The statute entered into force in
In its appeal, DEMUS argues that the prosecutor’s
decision “should not halt the criminal investigation.” It is “only the first
step in the search for truth” and does not end the evidence collection phase.
DEMUS asks for a higher level prosecutor to bring charges so that the case can
continue. Another means of re-opening the case would be for another victim to
bring a new complaint.
DEMUS also plans to bring the case to the attention of
the IACHR in March.
On Jan. 31, an article by Guzmán was published in the
newspaper El Comercio, saying that “the only way Fujimori could be held
responsible is by demonstrating command responsibility, and according to the
Constitutional Court the requirements for this are not fulfilled, because there
is no rigid vertical structure involved, and doctors cannot be obliged to
operate against their will.”
“They are isolated cases,” he told IPS.
According to the Health ministry, 346,219
sterilisations were performed on females and 24,535 on males between 1993 and
2000, 55.2 percent of them in the period 1996-1997 alone. During that period an
average of 262 tubal ligations were carried out a day.
More than 2,000 persons were documented to have been
deceived or threatened into undergoing sterilisation. Women in
Sabina Hillca, from Huayapacha in the Cusco region,
told IPS that she set out for the health centre in Anta when she was due to
give birth to her daughter, Soledad, but the birth happened on the way.
The nurses told her she should stay to be “cleansed”
and avoid infection. The next day she woke up crying, with sharp pain, an
incision close to her navel, and tied to the bed. Afterwards she fled to her
village, cleaned the wound with soap and water, removed the stitches as best as
she could, and went to her mother for herbal treatments.
“Now I have cancer because dry blood collected in my
ovaries,” she said, showing the dark scar on her abdomen.