Forced Sterilisation in Peru

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Between 1996 and 2000 more than 280,000 women were sterilised in Peru, many of them against their will. Most of the women were from poor indigenous communities. The sterilisations were carried out as part of a controversial family planning programme launched by the country's populist president, Alberto Fujimori.

Witness has spoken to one of the women who was sterilised and to a Peruvian doctor who refused to take part in the scheme.

Listeners may find some of the accounts in this programme upsetting.

Photo: Felicia Mamaniconsa, a victim of forced sterilisation (credit: Ronald Reategui).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and thank you for downloading witness with me Mike Lanchin.
0:03.7	And today we go back to the late 1990s and a controversial family planning program
0:09.2	conducted by the government in Peru.
0:11.8	More than 260,000 women were sterilised. the government
0:15.0	doctors over a four-year period,
0:18.0	many of them against their wishes.
0:20.0	I've been speaking to some of the people involved.
0:24.0	It's July of 19.
0:30.0	It's July of 1997. In a remote mountainous region of southern Peru, 29-year-old
0:39.0	Felicia Mammanikonsa is recovering from the birth of her fourth child. She's a poor indigenous Ketchua woman.
0:47.0	Spanish is not her first language.
0:49.0	The third area of the birth of my baby
0:55.0	of my baby, they came to my house.
0:57.0	Three days after the birth of my baby, they came to my house.
1:00.0	I'd asked for help because my baby was unwell.
1:03.0	They told me we'll have a look at him, but they didn't.
1:06.5	Instead, they drove me in a little van to the health center.
1:10.0	I went because I thought they were going to help with my baby but they never did.
1:14.0	The people who'd come to see Felicia were government health workers.
1:18.0	At the local health center the nurses told Felicia to get undressed.
1:22.0	Then they washed her in cold water and told her to get ready for an operation.
1:27.0	I wanted to escape, but the main door onto the road was locked.
	...

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