Court confirms – and increases - historic first compensation for sterilization victims
On Thursday, the High Court in Prague awarded compensation to two women,
one of them a Romany sterilized without her knowledge in 2003, the other a
non-Romany whose fallopian tubes were removed without her consent in 2006.
The ruling confirmed a previous verdict – the first of its kind – and
raised the amount originally awarded. Gwendolyn Albert, a human rights
activist and expert on the issue, discusses the verdict.
“It should definitely send a message, the message should be that when
hospitals permit violations of this kind they have to compensate victims
financially, that an apology is not enough and that hopefully doctors and
hospital management will begin to realize that they are going to be held
accountable for their errors.”
Does sterilization against women’s will or without their knowledge still
happen to women in the Czech Republic today and would you say that
predominantly, this affects Roma women?
“This case that was just litigated, the case occurred after the year
2000, in other words, this is a present day, modern problem. With respect
to whom this is happening, cases that are in the current era, as far as I
am aware, mostly Romany women have come forward.”
Is there any significance to the fact this verdict has been handed down at
this particular time?
“What I do find interesting, and I think a lot of other human rights
observers also find it interesting, is that this upper court verdict has
come down in the aftermath of the Czech government finally officially
acknowledging that these abuses have been occurring. This is a very
different verdict from the kinds of verdicts that have been coming down in
the past. There are other cases in which lower level courts awarded
compensation but the hospitals appealed, and then the higher level courts
overturned that on appeal. This is the first time that at the end of a
court procedure, a person t whom this has happened knows with certainty
that she is going to get a remedy that is more than just a letter from a
hospital, and that she is going to get money, which represents in some
small way atonement, a burden on those who perpetrated this against her.”
These women received hundreds of thousands of crowns, which is in the area
of around 10000 dollars – is that a fair amount, do you think?
“One woman has received a 200,000 crown award; the other woman has
received 150,000 crowns. Now, the damages that were sought were much
higher, they were on the order of a million or half a million crowns, which
is really the kind of award that would wake up hospital management to the
idea that they better make sure they get it right always, otherwise they
are going to have to pay. The money of course cannot return the
reproductive abilities to these women, but
It’s extremely important that some sort of disincentive be set up. The
hospitals cannot be allowed to do this with impunity, which is what the
situation has been to date.”
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These women received hundreds of thousands of crowns, which is in the area
of around 10000 dollars – is that a fair amount, do you think?
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