WUNRN
PERU – PURSUING JUSTICE FOR PERU POOR WOMEN FORCIBLY
STERILIZED DURING THE FUJIMORI PRESIDENCY
María Ysabel Cedano, Lawyer & Director of
Demus, a women’s rights group in Lima, Peru. It has sought damages for
indigenous women in Peru who were forcibly sterilized at one point in the
country’s long armed conflict.
By Rhona Scullion – 5 May 2015
LIMA, Peru — Despite making great economic strides
in recent years, Peru has a violent history that remains relatively fresh for
many people here. Starting around 1980 and lasting until 2000, the country was
rocked by an internal armed conflict between the Peruvian army and various
guerilla groups, most notably the Shining Path. Atrocity crimes were committed
by the warring parties, and women bore the brunt of many of these crimes
directly or relatedly, as revealed by human-rights groups and in post-conflict
truth-bearing settings.
A government program that came to light, for
example, after the violence ended, had set quotas for forcibly sterilizing
hundreds of thousands of indigenous women (and some men) from about 1996 to
2000. Under the guise of the Voluntary Surgical Contraception program,
President Alberto Fujimori authorized
large-scale involuntary tubal ligation to be carried out on mostly poor women.
Fujimori is now in prison for various charges, including corruption and
human-rights abuses, but he has never been charged for authorizing the forced
sterilization program.
The sterilizations were done by medical personnel
in mostly rural clinics, supposedly to reduce the population and to ostensibly
provide women the ability to exercise their reproductive rights in a ruse by
Fujimori to challenge the domination of the Catholic Church. The program
involved manipulation if not physical force, as an American medical
anthropologist, Kimberly Theidon, began documenting during her
visits to Peru starting in 1997. The Quechua speaking people became the main
targets because of their remote location and not knowing Spanish.
The surgeries were often rushed to meet the
quotas, which were set by the Ministry of Health, leaving victims with
complications or permanent health problems; in some instances, anesthesia ran
out but surgeries went on. Theidon’s research has also pointed out the
financial role of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID,
in the program.
While Peru now has laws meant to protect women
from violence and discrimination, they remain key issues for women, who are
undervalued in society by the government and by the machismo agenda in Peru.
María Ysabel Cedano is a feminist activist and
human-rights lawyer in Lima, the capital. She also directs Demus, a women’s rights
organization. Through Demus and other organizations, Cedano has been leading
attempts to seek justice for the victims of both the forced sterilizations and
the armed conflict and is a champion not only for women’s sexual and
reproductive rights but also for the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT)
population and ethnic minority groups.
In this interview with her, conducted in March
2015 at the Demus headquarters, she discussed her work. The interview has been
edited and condensed for length.
Q. Reports have revealed at least 300,000 (mainly
indigenous) women were forcibly sterilized by the Fujimori government in Peru
from 1996 to 2000. The feminist movement here has been trying to bring those
responsible for this coercion to justice, but an investigation headed by the
Inter American Commission on Human Rights was thrown out for a second time in
2014 on the basis, the court said, that forced sterilization does not
constitute a “crime against humanity.” What is the reasoning behind this
decision? And what are the next steps to move this case forward again?
A. Back in 2014, the inquiry on
forced or coerced sterilizations was partly halted. The state attorney who
ordered this argued that, despite the fact they were not common felonies and
constituted serious violations to human rights, they did not constitute crimes
against humanity. Since they are serious violations to human rights, he
considered they should not be completely thrown out, and so left the door open
for victims to refile a case against all health [and justice] personnel who
were responsible for forcibly sterilizing them. However, since they are not
crimes against humanity, the attorney general excluded [former president]
Alberto Fujimori and his former ministers of health from the inquiry and any
responsibility.
The problem here is that the attorney general
considered these crimes to be serious violations against human rights under the
form of “delitos culposos” [criminal negligence], which is a contradiction,
because you cannot have human-rights violations without intent. In other words
[if it is deemed negligence], you cannot commit a serious human-rights
violation. He also stated that these are not crimes against humanity because no
organized state apparatus was used to violate human rights, but the Ministry of
Health is a hierarchical and vertical organization where health staff would
report to the minister of health, who would then report to the president
regarding how the family planning program and the reproductive and sexual
health plan were being implemented. This is why we filed an appeal against
this ruling, and we’re still waiting for the 3rd National Circuit Court
[devoted to human rights] to resolve this appeal.
Q. Although violence against women was widespread
in Peru during the conflict, most of the violence fell on rural indigenous
women. These women are considered “double victims” because of their
vulnerability to both violence and discrimination. Do you feel that gender and
race are two factors that continue to limit and hurt women inside Peru?
A. Definitely, the victims of forced
sterilizations and sexual violence during the conflict are women who have been
discriminated against not just because of their gender, but also because of
their ethnicity, racial origin and social class. In Peru, discrimination takes
the form of a “braid of exclusion” that tangles together gender, class and
race. Both the victims of sexual violence during the conflict and of forced
sterilizations shared the same features of being peasant, Quechua-speaking
indigenous women. This demographic has been twice and even thrice victimized
during the cycle of political violence, which makes them vulnerable and exposes
them to even more violence.
An indigenous woman in Cuzco, selling alpaca wool
hats and other traditional goods. RHONA SCULLION
Q. Forced sterilization of women is not the only crime
against women that occurred during the decades-long civil war in Peru. Slavery
and rape of women also happened on both sides of the conflict. In 2006, the
Comprehensive Reparations Plan was set up to pay victims of the conflict, but
has any of this money been paid to victims?
A. During the internal armed conflict,
forced sterilizations were definitely not the only crime committed against
women. There were many forms of sexual violence going on. The report of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission registered 527 cases of rape against women
and 11 against men; right now, the Comprehensive Victim Registry lists more
than 4,000 cases involving different forms of sexual violence [against men and
women] that occurred during this time in Peru. This number accounts for all
forms of sexual violence, not just rape but sexual slavery, genital mutilation,
torturing pregnant women, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy and forced
abortion. However, we have not been able to pass the bill that modifies the
National Reparations Plan so [that] all victims of sexual violence are
considered victims and beneficiaries. Right now, only rape victims are
considered victims and beneficiaries in the Reparations Plan.
Demus has been fighting to modify Articles 3 and 6
from the Comprehensive National Reparations Plan. Parliament passed the
reformed bill, but the executive power, President Ollanta Humala and his then
prime minister [Óscar], Valdéz, proposed amendments that required it to be
resubmitted to Parliament and therefore delayed the process. Consequently, of
all the victims of sexual violence registered by the Comprehensive Victim
Registry, only some have received their reparations. Out of over 4,000
registered cases, I can tell you [for certain] about the women Demus has sponsored,
who are 3 female rape victims from a Highlander community in the Central Andes
region, whose cases are about to enter cross-examination. They have already
collected the 10,000 soles [$3,200] owed to them as monetary reparation.
Q. Peru has laws today that are supposed to
protect women from sexual harassment, domestic violence and sexual abuse, yet
these laws are not doing enough to prevent these crimes from happening. How can
legislators ensure that laws work to protect women? Are organizations like
Demus making progress in the push for greater protective laws for women in
Peru?
A. Currently, we have a law meant to
protect [people] against domestic/intra-family violence; we have “crimes
against sexual freedom” described and classified as felonies in our criminal
code; and recently, Parliament passed a bill to punish and prevent street
harassment. Right now, you can report harassment as “acts against modesty” or
as “public offenses,” but street sexual harassment by itself is not necessarily
something you can be convicted of; that is still pending a criminal code
reform.
We don’t believe that describing a specific type
of sexual violence as a crime is enough, or that you can change anything by
simply doing so. We believe that a proper public investment policy is
necessary. We need plans and programs aimed at prevention and to implement a
comprehensive curriculum for sexual education in schools, so public education
institutions can undo some of the damage done by the sexist, patriarchal
education that children receive at home. To accomplish all this, we need
different ministries to work together in a coordinated manner, not just the
Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Population and the Ministries of Education and
Health, but also Defense, Interior, Economy. Right now, the Ministry of Women
and Vulnerable Population gets less than 1 percent of the national budget every
year, and programs against family or sexual violence get even less, so even if
they’re opening over 20 new Women’s Emergency Centers per year, the coverage
and the quality they provide is well below adequate, and the government invests
less and less on prevention every year.
Q. What will it take for cultural views on women
in Peru to improve?
A. We need — on top of a public
education policy and a public policy on sexual education that questions
existing sexism — a national pact that involves both the relevant ministries
and the private sector, especially media groups, advertisers and marketing
agencies. We think it’s important for self-regulation organisms to have
specific agreements aimed at avoiding gender discrimination in advertising.
Parliament also needs to pass a bill against sexist advertising because the
National Institute for Consumer Protection has a policy of placing freedom of
speech over equality. They argue that there is no proof that advertising by
itself encourages or directly causes discrimination, but of course advertising
is full of sexist stereotypes that objectify women, because legislation is not
clear enough on the topic and any time a complaint is filed, it goes
unanswered.
Q. Demus also advocates for LGBT rights; what is
the biggest barrier to equality for LGBT people in Peru?
A. Demus has fought for the right of
transgender women to change their names legally, and we have succeeded: we
managed to get the Justice Department to accept a name change. We’re now trying
to get [the Justice Department] to accept a sex change on National Identity
Cards. We think one of the biggest barriers faced by the LGBT community is
discrimination at the hands of the religious establishment. The Catholic
Church, as well as other Christian churches, refuse to accept the
constitutional principle of church and state separation, and want their
religious doctrine to be the basis for Peruvian legislation. However, Peruvian
laws must be based on our Constitution and the human-rights conventions we
partake in. So right now, one of the main adversaries holding back the LGBT
community is the clergy who try to influence political powers and even
establish themselves within it by trying to enshrine their religious ideas into
law, despite the fact that Peru is a secular state.
The interview was translated from Spanish to
English by Ximena Rondon.