Racism’s cruelest cut: coercive sterilization in the Czech Republic

30 November 2016

By Marek Szilvasi and Bernard Rorke

A new report by the ERRC gives voice to Romani women who describe the shocking and chillingly routine abuses they endured as victims of coercive sterilization; the physical, social and psychological impacts on their lives; and their role as courageous activists in the fight for justice and reproductive rights.

The women’s testimonies provide poignant and emotive context to the standard reviews of the institutional and legal settings that permitted a regime of cruelty, deception and intimidation to inflict irreparable damage upon individual Romani women, their families and communities – a racist regime that even survived the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The most fearsome embodiment of this system that emerges in the testimonies of Romani women from the town of Most is the local social worker. She deployed a range of coercive methods to force women to undergo sterilisation and subjected them to constant harassment. She would threaten them with taking their children into state care, stripping them from state benefits, jailing their husbands for missing a day’s work, and putting them on vouchers rather than cash benefits; women recalled that she would visit their homes up to three times a day to check if they were taking proper care of their households and children.

She was perceived in the Romani neighbourhood of Chánov as the powerful agent of the state. So zealous and systemic was this social worker in her efforts to sterilise Romani women that many felt she was driven by anti-Roma prejudice. As Olga put it:

“They [non-Roma] wanted us to become extinct, not to have any more children. She didn’t like the Roma people, but she knew each one of us, by name, she came straight to the flat, didn’t even have to knock or ask for permission.”

Hana likened her to a member of the Gestapo: “she acted like she was omnipotent. She was walking around in her black coat, black walking shoes [...] the white band around her arm, papers in her hands, I can see her as clearly as if she was in front of me right now. She was blonde and walking around Chánov as if she was walking in a concentration camp, we were lucky we were not numbered like the prisoners, but it didn’t matter so much, because she knew all about us.”

As Olga described it, this social worker’s detailed knowledge of each of the ‘socially vulnerable’ Roma families meant she knew their weak points, “who lives badly, who lives well”. She offered money for sterilisation to some, to others not, she knew precisely when and where she could interfere: “There were moments when she was really evil and mean and nobody dared to oppose her, because she was threatening with those above and she also knew everyone, at school, at the police station, in hospital - all was prepared, when you got there.”

Allegedly, in addition to threats, the social worker routinely lied about the temporary nature of sterilisations. She convinced some Romani women that the effect of the procedure would wear off after five or so years.

She also features in what was perhaps the most extreme case of women who were completely unaware they were being sterilised. In 1977, at the age of 16, Nora was hospitalised with a miscarriage. She was under the legal guardianship of her parents due to having been previously diagnosed with a mental disability. The social worker recommended that Nora should be sterilised and promised them a financial payment if they agreed. Neither the parents, nor the social worker, nor medical personnel felt any need to inform Nora about the sterilisation. Nora eventually managed to move out of the guardianship closure and with the support of her partner escaped a likely placement in a mental institution. Nowadays, she lives with her partner and three dogs that, she says, are like her children.

The interviewed women recalled that this social worker created an atmosphere of inevitability and routine procedure concerning sterilization and she always ensured every logistic and administrative detail was taken care of in advance. Looking back and judging herself rather than the abusive system that oppressed them, Darina thought that they were all too young and stupid at that time, and also too scared to oppose the suggestions of the social worker:

“Today I would stand up against her, today we know what she had done in Chánov, how many families she had destroyed, I wouldn’t let that happen to me, if I knew what I know now.”

And that is perhaps what is unique about this report, for these women have stood up and fought back. One of the objectives of the research was to create a nation wide platform for affected Romani women to meet up and provide peer support in their call for compensation. Many of the interviewed women from Ostrava were already veteran campaigners as members of the “Group of Women Harmed by Involuntary Sterilisation.”

Through collective meetings and workshops, the research allowed Romani women to develop a common understanding of the injustice suffered; consider effective ways to advocate for compensation and better safeguards; and engage in awareness-raising activities to inform and engage the wider public around this issue.

In one of the most creative interventions, four of the women from Ostrava and Krnov used the testimonies and the report as the raw material for a social theatre performance. This widely acclaimed and deeply affecting play was, for the women, both an exercise in raising awareness and a form of therapy to cope with the trauma they endured. This “theatre of the oppressed” communicates and renders visible in a unique fashion, the kinds of knowledge and experience that is all too often obscured from the public agenda and expert meeting rooms. These Romani women have now emerged as more resilient self-advocates facing the media and audiences in their efforts, not only to fight for compensation, but also to ensure that no other women ever endure such maltreatment and abuse at the hands of medical professionals or state authorities. 

To access the full report Coercive and Cruel: Sterilisation and its Consequences for Romani Women in the Czech Republic (1966-2016)