Peruvian Government Shelves Investigation into Massive Forced Sterilizations of Indigenous Women

Friday June 19, 2009
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
Latin America Correspondent

(LifeSiteNews.com) - Peru's government has decided to end its investigation against former health officials for thousands of forced sterilizations carried out during the late 1990s, under president Alberto Fujimori.

Human rights organizations have thoroughly documented evidence that women were physically coerced, threatened, tricked, and enticed with economic incentives during the implementation of the program, which sterilized a total of approximately 400,000 Peruvian women in just two years, 1997 and 1998, with the help of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The coercive actions of program officials have been tied to pressure from the Peruvian government to meet pre-set sterilization quotas. The economic incentives offered to desperately poor women have also been criticized as coercive, and violated existing international standards for such programs. the rest