Thousand sterilised women may be entitled to compensation

Prague, Feb 21 (CTK) - Up to a thousand women, but 59 at least, may be entitled to compensation from the Czech state for unlawful sterilisation, the government committee for torture prevention says in a report assessing the issue.

To compensate victims of unlawful termination of fertility was previously recommended to the government by its human rights council.

It is not known when the cabinet may discuss the issue.

In the past, dozens of mainly Romany women turned to the ombudsman, an some also to courts, over forced sterilisation.

The government's human rights council says the ministers of labour, health, finance and justice, along with the government's human rights commissioner, should propose a model of the compensation to the cabinet by the end of 2013.

The committee for torture prevention says a special bill should be drafted, similar to the law enabling the compensation of freedom fighters and victims of Nazism.

A special commission installed by the government and comprising ministry officials, a gynaecologist and psychologist, would assess the claimants' applications and decide on whether the women are entitled to compensation.

A similar approach to the problem was taken by Sweden where 63,000 people, including 93 percent of women, underwent forced sterilisation in 1935-1975. At the time, the doctor mainly explained the step by the persons' mental retardation, but in fact there were social or eugenic (upgrading of race) reasons behind the sterilisations. Wrong approach was later proved in 10,000 cases at least, and 2,067 victims applied for compensation.

The Czech government committee has estimated the number of Czech applicants based on the Swedish experience.

It said at least 59 Czech women would claim compensation, since the Czech ombudsman previously passed 59 cases to the Supreme State Attorney's Office (NSZ) for handling. The NSZ has shelved all the cases over lack of evidence, however.

The maximal number of applicants may reach "up to a thousand," the committee said.

It has preliminarily proposed 300,000 to 400,000 crowns as compensation for a successful applicant depending on the damage caused to her health and how much the then valid directives were violated.

The state could pay out up to 400 million crowns in the compensations altogether, the committee says in its report.

In its previous report in 2006, the committee proposed compensation worth 175,000 crowns.

"Now this sum seems to be too low," it says in its fresh report.

It points out that last year some women gained half a million crowns from hospitals in extra-judicial settlement, and that the European Court of Human Rights has granted compensation of 31,000 euros (an equivalent of 773,000 crowns) to a complainant from Slovakia.

The committee proposes that the compensation go to the women who underwent involuntary sterilisation in the period from January 1972 to May 1991. At the time, the operations were made "for the sake of a healthy population" and the authorities offered up to 10,000 crowns to motivate the women involved.

The compensation may also go to those forcibly sterilised after 1991, who, however, cannot claim it in court over the expiry of the three-year period of limitation.

The state should pay the defence counsel for the women that can turn to the court, the committee proposes.

The European Roma Rights Centre came up with a suspicion of forced sterilisation of mainly Romany women in the then Czechoslovakia in 2004. The Czech government's human rights council recommended compensation steps in 2007.

In 2009, the Czech government apologised for the sterilisations.

U.N. committees dealing with the discrimination against races and women, however, say an apology is not enough.

($1=18.770 crowns)