Prague, Oct 1 (CTK) – The Czech cabinet rejected Human Rights Minister Jiri Dienstbier’s (Social Democrats, CSSD) proposal that the state grant compensation to victims of the unlawful sterilisation performed in the past decades, PM Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) said after the government’s night meeting yesterday.
Dienstbier and his team proposed that the women concerned each be granted up to 300,000 crowns worth of compensation.
Some ministers opposed the proposal previously. They said the victims could claim compensation through court proceedings. Moreover, the state has apologised to them and it has changed the rules of sterilisation, the proposal’s opponents say.
The suspicion of forced sterilisation surgeries in the Czech Republic, performed mainly on Romany women, was voiced by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) in 2004.
Subsequently, dozens of women reported to the Czech ombudsman, the public protector of citizens’ rights, about being victims of sterilisation. Some of them turned to courts.
The government committee against torture proposed the granting of a compensation in 2006.
In 2009, the Czech cabinet apologised for the unlawful surgeries.
International organisations have criticised the Czech Republic for that the state violated people’s rights and fails to provide compensation to the victims.
Dienstbier’s office said the proposed bill was to enable to grant a compensation for the victims whose claims are statute-barred and can no longer be promoted in court.
According to the bill, compensation would be available for the women who underwent sterilisation between July 1, 1966 and March 31, 2012, the period when an old controversial health law dating back to the communist period was in effect.
The women’s decision to undergo sterilisation was not free, they were talked into it and were threatened that their children or welfare benefits would be taken away from them otherwise.
($1=24.266 crowns)
