Sterilization campaigns before 1989

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tematically in separate rooms because of the misbehavior of a few. A proportional meas-ure would be to separate only those persons who cause or who have a history of discipline problems. Third, the ministry argued that Romani women leave the maternity ward immediately after the birth and come back five days later to take their children home. Even if this were true for all, or even most Romani women, which cannot be assumed, the moment of a mother’s departure from the hospital is irrelevant in the assignment of rooms and does not justify racial segregation.

It is illegal for doctors to segregate patients on the basis of their race unless

the measure is reasonable and objective and is undertaken for a legitimate purpose.

Slo-vakia’s Ministry of Health has so far failed to demonstrate the existence of such a

pur-pose. Even if the facilities were separate but equal, segregation in Slovak maternity wards

would still run afoul of international antidiscrimination norms, which the Slovak

Con-stitution requires the country to follow.

explicit consent. Women who visited doctors seeking assistance in giving birth or other medical help left clinics no longer able to bear children. Some doctors informed the women that they had been sterilized only after the operations and they were often told it was for medical reasons. Other doctors never informed their patients. In some cases, women started to suspect or learned that they had been sterilized only years after the procedure.

Although it is difficult to obtain full and accurate data about these practices, researchers found that, during the pre-1989 period, Romani women were sterilized at a rate more than 10 times higher than their percentage in the overall population. Pellar and Zbynek found that approximately 26 percent of the sterilized women in 1983 were Roma.

The percentage increased to almost 37 percent in 1987, even though Roma represented approximately 3 percent of Czechoslovakia’s overall population.

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Pellar and Zbynek also found that 9 of every 23 Romani women sterilized before 1989 had not been informed that they had been sterilized or were informed only after the operation.

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Researchers also discovered that many of the sterilizations violated legal proce-dures in addition to those requiring prior consent of the person to be sterilized. The law stated that women under 35 years old could undergo sterilization for contraceptive reasons only if they had more than four children; women over 35 years old could be sterilized only if they already had at least three living children.

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However, approximately 16 percent of sterilizations were performed on women who did not meet these qualifications.

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Struggling for Ethnic Identity: Czechoslovakia’s Endangered Gypsies, a report by

Helsinki Watch published in 1992, documents a number of cases of women who claim that their doctors sterilized them without their knowledge as they underwent other pro-cedures like abortions and cesarean sections. A.D., a woman from the town of Krompachy in central Slovakia, claims she was sterilized without her consent while undergoing an abortion:

“I went to get an abortion, and they told me, ‘Be so kind as to sign here before you go in for the abortion.’ So I signed and went in for the abortion. They just gave me the paper to sign, folded it, and put it in an envelope. I didn’t know anything. After the procedure they told me that something went wrong, that they had to repeat the procedure.

I was afraid that part of the fetus would stay in me, so they gave me an injection and brought me upstairs to the operating room. After the operation, when I went downstairs, the women asked me what was wrong and I told them about the badly done abortion.

Then they told me that I had been sterilized. But at the time I did not know what

sterili-sation was. The doctor had explained to me that there would be a period of time when I

wouldn’t be able to have children, but maybe after a while I’d be able to have children

again. But the other women told me that I wouldn’t be able to have any more children.”

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During fact-finding missions in Slovakia, the author of this report talked to many

Romani women who know or believe they are victims of forced sterilization. They agreed

to provide information on the circumstances of their cases, including the year, the

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pital, and sometimes the names of the doctors who operated on them, but only if their identities were not disclosed. Some of them considered taking legal action. All of them live in Romani settlements in Eastern Slovakia.

A.A. had a cesarean section in 1986 in a hospital in Eastern Slovakia.

After the operation, she never became pregnant again. Medical personnel con-firmed the fact that she is unable to bear children. Her medical record does not include any references to a sterilization procedure. She has been unable to deter-mine whether her sterility resulted from a medical intervention or the conse-quences of an illness, but she suspects that she was sterilized when she had the cesarean section. An examination that might make a definite assessment is not covered by health insurance and beyond her financial means.

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B.B. was sterilized in 1981 at the age of 21 after she had given birth to her second child. “The only thing the doctor asked me was whether I wanted a cesarean operation or whether I wanted to give birth normally. Five days after my child was born, the doctor said that he had sterilized me. I started crying, and I asked him why. He snapped: ‘I had to.’ He did not give me any compensatory treatment. I had and I still have health problems because of it. Six months ago I found out that abdominal pains I have suffered for years are caused by an untreated inflammation of the scar. Additionally, I had family problems, because we were still young and could have had more children. At first, my husband did not believe that the doctors did this to me without my permission.”

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C.C. was sterilized at her own request in 1988 at the age of 21. When she agreed to be sterilized, she was not fully aware of the implications that the oper-ation might have for her health. She later suffered severe physical complicoper-ations, including abdominal pains, missed periods, and abnormal uterine bleeding.

While these conditions might have arisen from other circumstances, C.C.

believes that the surgery was responsible for them.

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Throughout Czechoslovakia there were doctors who enthusiastically supported

the sterilization policy, even if the practice violated their patients’ human rights. One of

them, from the northern city of Most,

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shared with Helsinki Watch his belief that

doc-tors have the right to sterilize Romani women in the interest of the health of the nation

and for the sake of the state budget. “I’m convinced that sometimes there was

steriliza-tion after a cesarean secsteriliza-tion, when a very socially weak Romani woman . . . was

steril-ized without her knowledge,” he said. “I think that the gynecologist had the right to do

this without her consent. On the one hand, there are human rights. But on the other hand,

when you see how these Gypsies multiply and you see that it is a population of an

infe-rior quality, and when you look at the huge sums that had to be paid for the care of these

children, it’s understandable.”

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Slovakia has responded to complaints about the pre-1989 sterilization campaign primarily by arguing that the women consented to the procedures. In 1991, in the only known complaint of its kind, a group of 19 Romani women approached the authorities in Presov about sterilizations that had occurred between 1985 and 1989. The prosecutor rejected their complaint as groundless, arguing that sterilizations had been carried out only with the agreement of the women involved. Several of the women said that they had not consented and those who said they had consented maintained that they had done so only after social workers had pressured them. The women also pointed out that the state’s offer of a large amount of money to women who agreed to be sterilized put tremendous pressure on Romani women living in abject poverty. The prosecutor rebutted their argu-ments by maintaining that sterilizations performed with the women’s consent were legal regardless of the circumstances.

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In October 1991, the Czech Helsinki Committee appealed the prosecutor’s decision, but the appeal was dismissed and the case closed.

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When the issue has arisen in other forums in Slovakia, officials have again argued that the Romani women consented to the procedures. In 2000, a member of Slovakia’s par-liament and the chairman of its Committee for Human Rights and Nationalities denied a report presented in the European Parliament that Romani women were sterilized against their will.

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In a report submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Slova-kia’s previous government openly recognized that the sterilization policy was directed at Romani women but presented it as a form of “affirmative action” for the Roma. Accord-ing to the report: “The communist regime took every opportunity to manifest its ideals of social justice and equality. As a part of this effort, Roma became an object of intensive integration into the uniform mass of communist society, despite the fact that the Romani population differed from the rest of the society by their cultural heritage and way of life.

Romani families typically have more children and are used to living in colony-like com-munities. The official government policy used to treat Roma more favorably than the rest of the population [and the] government . . . paid Romani women sterilization allowances.”

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Despite the claim that sterilization was a kind of “affirmative action” for Roma,

the balance of the evidence and the arguments indicate that the campaign and its

proce-dures violated international law and constitutional protections. Some Romani women

were informed that they were going to be sterilized before the procedure took place; but

it is unclear whether the doctors fully advised them before the operations about the

irre-versible nature of the procedure and certain and potential medical side effects.

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Many

Romani women dispute the doctors’ accounts of how much information they were

pro-vided and how free their choice was in the face of pressure from social workers and

oth-ers. The size of the financial incentives offered relative to the women’s low socioeconomic

status also raises legitimate questions about the fundamental fairness of the “transaction.”

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Finally, if this program was so beneficial to the women, why didn’t more non-Romani women seek out these procedures? And why did the state not sponsor more of these operations for non-Romani women? Slovakia has a clear duty to investigate these issues more fully and to take legal action against persons responsible for any violations of law.

Romani organizations demanded that the sterilization campaign be halted and

condemned as attempted genocide.

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To date, however, no one has been brought to

jus-tice in connection with the communist regime’s systematic sterilization of Romani

women.

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In document On the Margins (Pldal 74-78)