Sterilised. Victims of Peru’s ‘voluntary’ contraception programme seeking justice 20yrs on

More films about human rights: As president of Peru in the 1990s, Alberto Fujimori introduced a programme to provide Peruvians with free vasectomies and tubal ligations as part of a comprehensive social development policy. Billed as a strategy to fight poverty and empower women, the surgical contraception was purportedly offered on a strictly voluntary basis. However, thousands of Peruvian women tell a very different story. From 1993-1999, more than 300,000 men and women were sterilised in Peru. Most were indigenous peasants from the poorest villages. Now, many women are coming forward with horror stories, describing how they were abducted and forcibly sterilized or awoke after giving birth to learn their baby was dead and their tubes had been tied. A great number still suffer from severe physical side effects caused by these procedures to this day. Fujimori’s defenders say the numbers given for forced sterilisations are grossly exaggerated, shifting the blame to the US and