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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Mon Jan 4, 2016, 10:39 PM Jan 2016

Peru's forcibly sterilised women find their voice

Peru's forcibly sterilised women find their voice

The Quipu project enables people sterilised under the Fujimori regime in the 1990s to record their traumatic experiences

Monday 4 January 2016 04.00 EST

“I was forced to get sterilised while giving birth,” says one woman from the district of Zurite in northern Peru.

“The nurses were insistent and telling me to get sterilised, that ‘you have several children already and you’re going to have more because you’re young’, and they sterilised me at the age of 27. That was 18 years ago now, but I (still) don’t have my full strength,” she says down the phone line.

Hundreds of thousands of women and men – many poor and indigenous – were forcibly sterilised under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. Many continue to suffer emotional and physical pain from the operations, which were often botched.

“I was sterilised when my daughter was one month old,” says another women, from Piura. “When I went to the clinic, they wouldn’t give me the paperwork I needed to register her in Sondorillo. They wouldn’t give me the certificate unless I agreed to get sterilised.”

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/04/peru-forced-sterilisation-quipu-project-alberto-fujimori

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