[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 154 (Friday, November 18, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2414-E2415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       COERCED STERILIZATIONS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND SLOVAKIA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 18, 2005

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, last week, the district court 
in the Czech town of Ostrava reached a very important decision. The 
court concluded that, in 2001 after the birth of her second child, a 
local Romani woman was sterilized without informed consent. In fact, 
since last year, the Czech Ombudsman has been examining dozens of 
similar cases. Although he has not yet issued any public findings, it 
is expected that the Ombudsman will confirm that many other Romani 
women experienced similar violations of their rights, as documented by 
several Czech human rights groups and the European Roma Rights Center.
  Sadly, the issue of sterilizations without informed consent is not 
new in this region. As early as 1977, the dissident group Charter 77 
reported on systematic efforts to target Romani women in Czechoslovakia 
for coerced sterilization. While the vast majority of sterilizations in 
the Czech Republic and Slovakia since 1989 were performed with informed 
consent, the Ostrava case demonstrates that the practice of performing 
sterilizations without informed consent did not completely end with the 
fall of the communist regime.
  That precedent-setting court decision sheds light on a number of 
legal points in one specific case. At the same time, there are many 
larger questions still at issue, including whether racism against Roma 
contributed to the abuse. Frankly, given the large percentage of Roma 
among the victims of sterilization without informed consent compared 
with the small percentage of the Czech population that Roma constitute, 
it is hard for me to believe that race did not play some role. There 
are, of course, other possible factors to consider: what role did a 
poor quality of medical care or training play in these cases of medical 
malpractice? Did a lack of respect for an individual's liberty--a hold-
over mentality from the totalitarian period--also contribute to the 
abuse?
  I welcome the Ostrava court's decision and commend the plaintiff in 
that case, Helena Ferencikova, for her courage in bringing it forward. 
I have also been heartened by the apparent seriousness of the 
Ombudsman's investigation into this difficult and sensitive matter.
  Unfortunately, similar issues in neighboring Slovakia continue to be 
met with government denials and stonewalling.
  In 2003, the Slovak Government concluded a year-long investigation 
into allegations that some Romani women were sterilized without 
informed consent, even after the fall of communism. That investigation 
was deeply flawed. At one point, for example, a spokesperson for the 
Minister for Human Rights threatened that anyone bringing forward 
allegations of sterilization without informed consent would go to jail, 
one way or another. This is not the way to foster confidence in an 
investigation or to encourage victims to speak out.
  Significantly, the Czech investigation and the Slovak investigation 
both revolved around the same 1992 Czechoslovak law on sterilizations, 
put in place before the two countries split apart. Czech authorities 
have understood that law as requiring that sterilizations had to be 
requested by the person who was going to be sterilized, that there had 
to be evidence of consent by that person, and that consent had to be 
meaningfully informed. Being ``informed'' means, for example, that the 
expectant mother must be told why the procedure is necessary. If 
someone was given false information about the procedure, which was the 
case in many instances, then she was not meaningfully ``informed.''
  When interpreting the same law, however, Slovak authorities 
maintained that consent did not have to be ``informed.'' Accordingly, 
Slovak investigators examined numerous cases where there was no 
informed consent but still concluded there was no violation of the 1992 
law because, according to their twisted logic, consent didn't have to 
be informed!
  In reality, the Slovak Government seemed to organize its 
investigation into the sterilization cases in a way that was designed 
to cover up the magnitude of the problem. The Slovak Government's 
investigation revealed seven cases of Romani minors who were sterilized 
in violation of the then-existing Slovak law. In reality, the Slovak 
Government's

[[Page E2415]]

interpretation of the concept of ``consent'' could not be reconciled 
with modern health norms and had to be changed to explicitly require 
that consent is informed. (The new law went into effect at the 
beginning of this year.) In reality, numerous international officials 
have repeatedly expressed concern over the sterilization practices in 
the Slovak Republic and the inadequacy of the Slovak Government's 
response to them, including in the April 2005 report on the situation 
of Roma issued by the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner.
  In light of all this, it is extremely frustrating to read that Slovak 
officials have, in recent months, made misleading statements about this 
important issue. Apparently one official has even declared that 
``illegal sterilizations of Romani women never happened in Slovakia.''
  Mr. Speaker, when the institutions of justice are perceived to follow 
one set of rules for the majority and another for minorities, this is a 
recipe for social unrest--as we know from our own painful history.
  I understand that it is always a difficult exercise for any 
government to admit its own wrongdoing or the wrongdoings of the 
majority society--we know this, too. But Romani mistrust of government 
institutions will only deepen if the Slovak Government persists in 
denying the wrongs perpetrated against their community.

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