Peruvian justice prosecutes Alberto Fujimori for the forced sterilizations of poor and indigenous women

The Justice of Peru has approved this Saturday the opening of a criminal process against the former president Alberto Fujimori, as well as against several of his Ministers of Health, in the case of the forced sterilizations.

Thus, together with the ex-president, it has been resolved to “open a criminal proceeding” against former Health ministers Eduardo Yong Motta, Marino Ricardo Luis Costa Bauer and Alejandro Aurelio Aguinaga, as well as against Ulises Jorge Aguilar, for “the alleged commission of the crime against life, body and health, serious injuries followed by death in a context of serious violation of Human Rights “, as considered by the magistrate of the Superior Court of Criminal Justice of Peru, Rafael Martínez.

At this point, the judge has appointed the more than 1,300 womenTo which, under the Fujimori government, operations were carried out tubal ligation against his will, as detailed in the newspaper ‘La República’.

In previous hearings, the magistrate considered that the forced sterilizations were responsible for the senior officials involved and reiterated that, as a result of these events, human rights were violated in a health strategy that caused at least five deaths, including that of Mamérita Mestanza, the most emblematic face of the case.

According to the tax complaint, Fujimori would be the most responsible for promoting sterilizations as a systematic method of reducing poverty by lowering the birth rate. The 83-year-old ex-president is already serving a 25-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity as the mediator of the murder of 25 people in the Barrios Altos (1991) and La Cantuta (1992) massacres, perpetrated by the group. undercover military Hill.

On the other hand, Judge Martínez has also suspended the criminal proceedings against the former president until the Chilean authorities approve an extension of the extradition process for this same case, although the investigation will continue its course for the rest of the accused.

In this sense, the representative of the Public Ministry, the prosecutor Carmen Rosa Crisostomo, has announced that the corresponding procedures will begin for the request to the Chilean Justice for the extension of extradition of the former president.

Forced sterilizations occurred during the implementation of the Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program 1996-2000, where voluntary surgical contraception (VCA), as tubal ligation and vasectomies were called, were ostensibly increased.

During that period they were sterilized about 300,000 people, among them more than 272,000 women and about 22,000 men, according to the reports of the Ministry of Health collected by the Ombudsman’s Office, but at present it is still unknown how many of them were forced.

For now, there is more to 8,000 registered victims in the Registry of Victims of Forced Sterilizations (Reviesfo), opened by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights since 2016. Just over 2,000 are those who have formally denounced having been forcibly sterilized, of which 1,307 ended up seriously injured, and of them five died as a result of the aftermath of the intervention. The complainants, for the most part poor, Andean, indigenous and Quechua-speaking women, claim to have been subjected to tubal ligation without their having given their consent, under threats and coercion or directly without them being aware of the intervention after having requested another medical procedure.

Now, with this decision by Judge Martínez, the Prosecutor’s Office will be allowed to gather evidence of the commission of the crime and the circumstances in which it was perpetrated, in addition to studying the participation of the perpetrators and accomplices.