District Attorney Luis Landa has ordered charges of criminal responsibility to be brought against former President Alberto Fujimori and several other people from his government, including three cabinet members, for the forced sterilizations of 2,166 women during the Fujimori administration.
Besides Fujimori, the charges are against three of his Health ministers, Marino Costa Bauer, Eduardo Yong and Alejandro Aguinaga — the latter, also a former congressman, is Fujimori’s personal physician — and the head of the National Reproductive Health Program, Jorge Parra.
Landa ordered prosecutor Marcelita Guiterrez to re-open the case following the appeal made by 77 women, backed by the women’s defense organization, DEMUS, and Carlos Rivera, defense attorney at the Legal Defense Institute, IDL.
The initial complaint was filed by 2,166 women 15 years ago, which was followed by a lengthy process of investigation and witness statements.
Gutierrez closed the case in December 2016, ruling that neither Fujimori nor his ministers were responsible, despite evidence that the sterilizations program was a government policy that included quotas for different regions in the Andean highlands and the jungle.
The People’s Ombudsman’s office verified 272,028 tubal ligations and 22,004 vasectomies were performed by the program, almost all to Quechua-speaking poor people in rural areas. Many women voluntarily accepted the surgery, but there are many testimonies of coercion and deception, of humiliation and mistreatment, of long-term pain and infections. During the investigation, photos taken by medical staff were leaked to the press, showing the inhumane conditions in the surgery and waiting wards.
It’s not known how many women were deceived or forced, but the Inter-American Human Rights Commission determined that the number is “very high” and that at least one woman died as a consequence of the surgery.
Landa said the involuntary sterilizations were a “grave violation of human rights” and therefore the statute of limitations does not apply.
DEMUS issued a statement, saying “District Attorney Landa’s (decision) is a milestone in the battle against impunity when he highlights that the national policy of forced sterilizations of thousands of Quechua-speaking women, peasant farmers, indigenous and native women in extreme poverty, committed serious human rights crimes.”
Fujimori was serving a 25-year sentence for human rights crimes for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta murders when he was pardoned by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Christmas Eve last year. He is now living in a suburb in southeast Lima. In June this year, he will also be standing trial for criminal responsibility in the murder in 1992 of six men in the farming community of Pativilca, committed by the Grupo Colina death squad under orders of his chief intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos.
FDS…Fujimori Derangement Syndrome……communists taking “revenge” for the defeat of their terrorist brigades…. What’s worse, today’s Peruvian children are NOT being taught their own History, and that only 20 years ago, Peru was rocked by vicious communist terrorism, massacres of whole aboriginal villages by the Senderos….
Most of the 70,000 killed in this “civil war”…were killed by the Sendero Luminoso or MRTA. A number of the dead counted as “civilians” killed by the Security forces were, in fact, Terrorists…..including those lovely University students and their professor, who participated in the truck bombing of an apartment building…….which USED to be located where now exists a Memorial Park…..at Larco and Schell.
Let’s blame it all on the man who SAVED Peru…..ended the lengthy and “hot” war between Ecuador and Peru, Stabilized the economy and the horrendous daily inflation that existed when he was first elected, and, DESPITE the obstructive actions of Deputies in Congress who were SL and MRTA sympathizers, eliminated the Marxist MRTA after they seized the Japanese Embassy, and the Maoist Sendero Luminoso. Blame the guy who fixed the problems….and ignore those who CAUSED the problems. That’s the “Peruvian Way”. Sad
That’s justice!! respect for human beings has nothing to do with politics. Those women must be indemnified and the responsible must pay.
The Fujimori party has sale for nothing strategic resources, permitting exoneration to foreiner monopolies on communications, merchant navy, airlines, gas, electricity, most of them important for the security & sovereignty. Fujimori daughter sucks.