Victims of forced sterilization in Czech Republic fights for compensation

By Gustavo Monge

Ostrava, Czech Republic, Mar 25 (efe-epa).- Elena Gorolova was 21 years old when she was coercively sterilized in a Czech hospital in 1990.

Now hundreds of women from the Romani community who suffered the same fate are hoping to finally get a compensation.

The Czech parliament is in the process of passing a widely supported law to compensate each victims of forced sterilization with 11,500 euros ($13,500).

An estimated number of 400 women were forcibly sterilized between 1966 and 2012.

If the law gets approved, it will be “a great victory for all women, because it has been a struggle for all of them,” Gorolova tells Efe, pointing out that this compensation generates mixed feelings.

“It is also sad because money will not give us children,” adds Gorolova, who lives in Ostrava, in the northeast of the country.

On Feb. 24, 1990, Gorolova had a complicated delivery with her second child at the Vitkovice-Ostrava hospital and ended up undergoing caesarean section.

While she was still on the hospital bed recovering from a severe pain, the medical staff gave her two documents to sign.

“One was for the name of the boy or girl. The other one, I think, was for sterilization, which I signed without knowing at all what it was about,” she says.