Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru, and three former ministers may be accused of genocide by Peru's parliament.
A commission concluded that thousands of Peruvians—mostly poor indigenous people—underwent compulsory surgical sterilisation that resulted in damage to their dignity and physical integrity including deaths due to improper health care.
The report on the “voluntary contraceptive surgery activities” programme set up by Mr Fujimori's government was released on 23 July by health minister Dr Fernando Carbone-Campoverde.
The report said that between 1993 and 1995, surgeons performed 80395 fallopian tube ligations and 2798 vasectomies. Between 1996 and 2000 the numbers were higher (215227 and 16547 respectively).
When Mr Fujimori was re-elected in 1995, he promised that a main goal of his government was to achieve a substantial reduction in Peru's birth rate by the end of the 20th century. The family planning programme was launched in 1995, and after that the health ministry started to issue sterilisation quotas to doctors in rural areas.
A 1998 report released by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights stated that doctors had been submitted to pressures by the government to get their quotas.
The new report says that “the existence of pressures, incentives, harassment, and threats” makes it doubtful just how voluntary the voluntary sterilisations were.
The report says that the most common threats were that if surgery was rejected “there would be no right to request health care for children, newborns would not be registered, and people would be fined.”
Mr Fujimori, who held power from 1990 to 2000, is currently in exile in Japan, where he fled to avoid trial for allegedly sanctioning a massacre by two death squads.