The Czech government has decided to compensate victims of forced sterilization, allotting approximately $10,000 per victim for the damage caused. The proposal is currently before the Government Council for Human Rights and is to be considered further in September 2007. This practice, largely inflicted on Roma women in the Czech Republic, was common between 1966 and 1991, according to Prague Radio.
The UN has been investigating the status of forced sterilization in the Czech Republic, and in 2006 the U.N. heard testimony from a Roma woman who testified to being forced into sterilization, and to having known many others forced to undergo the procedure. According to her testimony, she believed this had happened to her due to belonging to the Roma minority.
This human rights violation became public in 2004 when the European Roma Rights Center published allegations that the Czech Republic, along with other countries, was “solving the problem” of the Roma minority through this and other practices.
Compiled from: Czech Republic may atone for sterilization, United Press International, 17 July 2007.