Czech Republic-Sterilization of Roma Women-Report-Court Ruling
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: June 12, 2006
June 17, 2006
Gypsy women confront Czechs on ugly legacy
OSTRAVA, Czech Republic — Just hours after her second child was born,
19-year-old Helena Ferencikova’s joy was dashed. In the recovery room, she
discovered that the paper she had signed, not knowing what it said, had allowed
doctors to sterilize her.
The Vitkovicka hospital in the northeastern Czech Republic says further
pregnancies might have killed her. But Ferencikova believes the reason was her
ethnicity – Gypsy.
Now a court ruling and a high-profile official inquiry have backed her up,
and the country is having to confront the charge that an abuse many thought had
died with communism is still being practiced.
The uproar goes to the broader issue of entrenched European prejudice toward
Gypsies, or Roma as they prefer to be called, especially in the former communist
bloc, where most of the continent’s 7-9 million Gypsies are concentrated.
The Czech ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, began investigating allegations that Roma
women and girls were being unwittingly sterilized after 10 of them approached
him in September 2004. He said he received 87 complaints, nearly all filed by
Roma.
“The ombudsman is convinced that in the Czech Republic, the problem of sexual
sterilization – carried out either with an unacceptable motivation or illegally
– exists and that Czech society faces the task of coming to grips with this
reality,” Motejl’s 74-page report concludes.
In
all the cases, “no consent for sterilization was given that would be free of
error and fully unrestrained,” he said. “That’s what all the cases have in
common, with no exception at all.”
Under communism, which ended in 1989, sterilization was a semiofficial tool
to limit the population of Roma, whose large families were seen as a burden on
the state.
Today, doctors defend the procedure on medical grounds, saying it is
recommended after a second Caesarean section. In the Ferencikova case, the
hospital said both her births had been Caesarean, her uterus was weak and
another pregnancy could have ruptured it.
Victims’ advocates counter that the women have a right to choose for
themselves, that they are not properly told their options, and that the practice
is rooted in racism.
“I’m convinced that the doctors … are people who have stereotypes and
prejudices against Roma and who don’t consider patients to be their partners but
mere subjects,” Motejl’s deputy, Anna Sabatova, told The Associated Press.
Elena Gorolova, another Roma woman from Ostrava, 220 miles east of Prague,
said she was about to give birth to her second son by Caesarean section on Sept.
24, 1990, when she was handed a paper and told by the attending physician to
sign it.
“‘Sign this or you’ll die’ – those were the words,” she said.
Doctors “didn’t bother to explain anything to me,” said Gorolova, adding that
she didn’t learn what exactly had happened until a pediatrician visited her at
home.
“It was pretty sad to learn when you’re 21 that you’ll have no more
children,” she said. “What else was it other than racial discrimination against
us? They just didn’t want Roma children to be born.”
Gorolova and Ferencikova now belong to the Group of Women Harmed by
Sterilization, an 18-month-old support group of three dozen members from the
region who meet monthly.
“They suppressed their feelings for years, and many of them haven’t told
their husbands and partners about it for fear of breaking up their
relationships,” said Kumar Vishwanathan, head of the Ostrava-based Life Together
association, which works to reconcile Czech society with the country’s estimated
200,000-250,000 Gypsies.
The Czechs are not the only offenders. Savelina Danova of the Budapest-based
European Roma Rights Center said in a telephone interview that scattered cases
have been identified in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, but “nothing to compare
to what happened in the Czech Republic or Slovakia,” the two countries that were
Czechoslovakia until they split in 1993.
But while the Czech republic’s ombudsman has confronted the issue head-on,
Slovakia has been accused of ducking it. Last year, it announced that a 2003
investigation had found no crime of genocide was committed in connection with
sterilizations. The Roma rights center protested, saying it had never claimed
genocide.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-NJ, said last
November he was “heartened by the apparent seriousness of the (Czech)
ombudsman’s investigation into this difficult and sensitive matter,” but
dismayed that “similar issues in neighboring Slovakia continue to be met with
government denials and stonewalling.” He called the 2003 investigation “deeply
flawed.”
Smith singled out Ferencikova for her courage in going public after she
became the first victim to sue the hospital that sterilized her. In November, an
Ostrava court ruled that the clinic had to issue a formal apology to her.
The court rejected her demand for compensation, however, saying a three-year
statute of limitations on her case had expired.
“We don’t share that view,” said Ferencikova’s legal adviser, Michaela
Tomisova. “She will suffer for her entire life. Why is it not possible to
compensate her? That’s not right.”
Both Ferencikova and the hospital, which denied wrongdoing, are
appealing.
“We regret that the court did not take into consideration the woman’s
condition and serious risks posed by another pregnancy,” hospital spokeswoman
Simona Souckova said in a statement to the AP.
“They’ve ruined my life,” the slightly built Ferencikova said in an
interview, sitting with sons Jan, 4, and Nikolas, 5, in her tidy Ostrava
apartment. “I don’t understand why they did it to me. I was so young and
healthy.”
Ombudsman Motejl says the law should mandate informed consent and give women
seven days to weigh the consequences of sterilization.
The Health Ministry should publish a clear description of sterilization and
its effects, and doctors should be more forthcoming with their patients, his
report says.
Motejl also suggests the state should compensate women sterilized between
1973 and 1991, when social workers backed by communist-era legislation would
pressure Roma women to undergo the procedure by offering them money and
threatening to withhold social benefits.
Those victimized after should sue individually for compensation, Motejl said,
though Vishwanathan says it’s risky because hospitals can afford better
lawyers.
The Czech Health Ministry, which set up a committee to investigate each of
the cases, acknowledges that the sterilizations were carried out improperly, and
will propose measures “to improve the situation soon,” said Vaclav Sebor, a
ministry official.
But the ministry doesn’t support the compensation idea, and Vitkovicka and
other hospitals continue to fight and issue denials of doing anything
illegal.
At Municipal, another Ostrava hospital, the chief doctor at the maternity
ward declined to go into details because a lawsuit by a sterilized woman is
pending. But Richard Spousta told the AP: “Our view is that we were acting
according to the rules.”
“The patients signed (their approval),” he said. “Now they claim they don’t
know what they were signing.”
Spousta said patients at Municipal are asked to sign a two-page document
which gives information about sterilization and encourages them to ask
questions.
But Ferencikova remembers doctors telling her a few minutes before the
delivery that a Caesarean section was needed and asking her to sign
something.
“I was in pain and was not able to read what I was signing,” she said. “I
just said to myself, ‘You can trust the doctors.'”
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