Genocide in sterilising the poor?

THE EDITOR: I have carefully followed the arguments of Aspire for legalising abortion in Trinidad and Tobago.

I have also carefully read their document outlining what they intend to do and why. In their statements in press and on radio and more clearly in their extraordinary suggestions for legislation, Aspire makes no secret of the fact that this abortion is deliberately geared to the poor. In some of their more honest statements this directing towards the poor is in order that the poor do not reproduce children who would themselves be poor reproducing poverty. This interest in the poor was shared by Fujimoro’s Government in Peru. Encouraged by women’s groups, congratulated by the relevant UN Organisations, lauded by Family Planning Associations, Fujimoro’s Government launched a sterilisation programme deliberately directed towards Peru’s poor.

According to the BBC, 300,000 poor ‘Indian’ Peruvian women were pressured or forced to be sterilised. Well Fujimoro is now wanted for genocide, ie, the deliberate policy of solving poverty by preventing a particular sector of a population, in this case the poor, from having children. Some women’s groups, faced with the horror other women have gone through, have been reluctant to speak out against Peru’s policy. Poor women have not. The Peruvian case is a test case, ie, where countries deliberately target any specific sector of their population for population policies aimed at curtailing their reproduction, does this come under genocidal acts? The poor are vulnerable, easily pressured and easily given slanted information whatever the ‘counselling’ clause, as the Peru case of so-called ‘voluntary’ sterilisation illustrates.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN
Woodbrook