BBC Article HERE

12 April 2012
Last updated at 01:19









Uzbekistan's policy of secretly sterilising women







By Natalia Antelava
BBC World Service

The BBC has been told by
doctors that Uzbekistan is running a secret programme to sterilise women
- and has talked to women sterilised without their knowledge or
consent.
(edit by Rayyaan - Not sure if the above sentence makes sense...thank you BBC)



Adolat has striking looks, a quiet voice and a secret that she finds deeply shameful.


She knows what happened is not her fault, but she cannot help feeling guilty about it.


Adolat comes from Uzbekistan, where life centres around
children and a big family is the definition of personal success. Adolat
thinks of herself as a failure.
"What am I after what happened to me?" she says as her hand
strokes her daughter's hair - the girl whose birth changed Adolat's
life.
"I always dreamed of having four - two daughters and two sons
- but after my second daughter I couldn't get pregnant," she says.

Continue reading the main story
"Every doctor is told how many women are to be sterilised - there is a quota”



Uzbek gynaecologist


She went to see a doctor and found out that she had been sterilised after giving birth to her daughter by Caesarean section.


"I was shocked. I cried and asked: 'But why? How could they do this?' The doctor said, 'That's the law in Uzbekistan.'"


Sterilisation is not, officially, the law in Uzbekistan.


But evidence gathered by the BBC suggests that the Uzbek
authorities have run a programme over the last two years to sterilise
women across the country, often without their knowledge.
Foreign journalists are not welcome in Uzbekistan, and in
late February of this year the authorities deported me from the country.
I met Adolat and many other Uzbek women in the relative safety of
neighbouring Kazakhstan. I also gathered testimony by telephone and
email, and in recordings brought out of the country by courier.




None of the women wanted to give their real names but they
come from different parts of Uzbekistan and their stories are consistent
with those of doctors and medical professionals inside the country.
"Every year we are presented with a plan.







Every doctor is
told how many women we are expected to give contraception to; how many
women are to be sterilised," says a gynaecologist from the Uzbek
capital, Tashkent.












Like all doctors I interviewed, she spoke on a condition of
anonymity. Talking to a foreign journalist could result in a prison
term, in a country where torture in detention is the norm.
"There is a quota. My quota is four women a month," she says.


Two other medical sources suggest that there is especially
strong pressure on doctors in rural areas of Uzbekistan, where some
gynaecologists are expected to sterilise up to eight women per week.





"Once or twice a month, sometimes more often, a
nurse from the local clinic comes to my house trying to get me to the
hospital to have the operation," says a mother of three in the Jizzakh
region of Uzbekistan.
"Now it's free, but later you will have to pay for it, so do it now," the nurse tells the mother.


Another mother says she experienced months of mysterious pain
and heavy bleeding following the birth of her son. Then she had an
ultrasound check and discovered that her uterus had been removed.
"They just said to me, 'What do you need more children for? You already have two,'" she says.


The BBC gathered similar testimony from the Ferghana Valley, the Bukhara region and two villages near the capital Tashkent.


According to a source at the Ministry of Health, the
sterilisation programme is intended to control Uzbekistan's growing
population, which is officially held to be about 28m people. Some
demographers are sceptical, however, pointing to the large numbers of
people who have emigrated since the last census in 1989, when the
population stood at around 20m.



"We are talking about tens of thousands of
women being sterilised throughout the country," says Sukhrob Ismailov,
who runs the Expert Working Group, one of very few non-governmental
organisations operating in Uzbekistan.












In 2010, the Expert Working Group conducted a
seven-month-long survey of medical professionals, and gathered evidence
of some 80,000 sterilisations over the period, but there is no way of
verifying the number and some of the procedures were carried out with
the patient's consent.








The first cases of forced sterilisation were reported in
2005, by Gulbakhor Turaeva - a pathologist working in the city of
Andijan who noticed that uteruses of young, healthy women were being
brought to a mortuary where she worked.








After gathering evidence of 200 forced sterilisations, by
tracing women from whom the uteruses were removed, she went public with
her findings and asked her bosses for an explanation. Instead they
sacked her.




In 2007 Turaeva went to jail, accused of smuggling opposition
literature into the country. Like many others, she refused to be
interviewed for this report because of fears for her and her children's
safety.





In 2007, the United Nations Committee Against Torture also reported
forcible sterilisations and hysterectomies in Uzbekistan, and the number
of cases of forced sterilisation appeared to fall.








But according to medical sources, in 2009 and 2010 the Uzbek
government issued directives ordering clinics to be equipped to perform
voluntary surgical contraception.







In 2009, doctors from the capital were
also despatched to rural areas to increase the availability of
sterilisation services.




There is evidence that the number of sterilisations then began to rise again.


"On paper, sterilisations should be voluntary, but women
don't really get a choice," says a senior doctor from a provincial
hospital, who wished to remain unnamed.












"It's very easy to manipulate a woman, especially if she is
poor. You can say that her health will suffer if she has more children.
You can tell her that sterilisation is best for her. Or you can just do
the operation."




Several doctors I spoke to say that in the last two years
there has been a dramatic increase in Caesarean sections, which provide
surgeons with an easy opportunity to sterilise the mother. These doctors
dispute official statements that only 6.8% of women give birth through
C-sections.








"Rules on Caesareans used to be very strict, but now I
believe 80% of women give birth through C-sections. This makes it very
easy to perform a sterilisation and tie the fallopian tubes," says a
chief surgeon at a hospital near the capital, Tashkent.





Several doctors and medical professionals said
forced sterilisation is not only a means of population control but also
a bizarre short-cut to lowering maternal and infant mortality rates.
"It's a simple formula - less women give birth, less of them die," said one surgeon.


The result is that this helps the country to improve its
ranking in international league tables for maternal and infant
mortality.




"Uzbekistan seems to be obsessed with numbers and
international rankings," says Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia director at
Human Rights Watch.
"I think it's typical of dictatorships that need to construct a narrative built on something other than the truth."


Swerdlow believes foreign governments could do more. Until
recently Uzbek President Islam Karimov was a pariah in the West, but in
recent years both the US and the EU have lifted sanctions, including a
US ban on arms sales.




This is apparently related to America's worsening
relationship with Pakistan and Nato's increased use of routes through
Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, to get supplies and troops in and
out of Afghanistan.A number of Western dignitaries have visited
Uzbekistan in recent months, but few have made any public comment on the
country's human rights record.








"Karimov has managed to get to the point in his relationship
with the West when there are no consequences for his actions and human
rights abuses," says Swerdlow.








"There is a deafening silence when it comes to human rights.
Reports of forced sterilisation add urgency to breaking this silence."
In a written reply to the BBC's request for comment, the
Uzbek government said the allegations of a forced sterilisation
programme were slanderous and bore no relation to reality.
The government also said that surgical contraception was not
widespread and was carried out only on a voluntary basis, after
consultation with a specialist and with the written consent of both
parents.








The Uzbek government stressed that Uzbekistan's record in
protecting mothers and babies is excellent and could be considered a
model for countries around the world.








However, Nigora is among many for whom forced sterilisation
is a reality. She had an emergency C-section. A day later she was told
she had been sterilised. On the same day, her newborn died.
Nigora is 24 and will never have children.






Uzbekistan: Infant and maternal deaths

• Uzbekistan ranked 140th out of 194 countries in terms of infant
  mortality in 2005-2010, according to data from the UN Population
  Division



• This put it just behind Laos, Madagascar and Bolivia, and just ahead of Bangladesh, Ghana and Papua New Guinea



• Figures from the UN Population Fund indicate that Uzbekistan
  had a maternal mortality ratio of 30 deaths per 100,000 live births in
  2008 - a 44% improvement on 1990



• This ratio put it level with Iran, just ahead of Albania and
  Malaysia (31) and just behind Armenia (29), Romania and Uruguay (27)

Islam Karimov

• Born 1938, became first secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party in 1989 and president of the Uzbek Socialist Republic in 1990



• Elected president of independent Uzbekistan in 1991 with 86% of
  the vote, re-elected in 2000 with 92%, and again in 2007 with 88%



• Mr Karimov has been accused of using the threat of Islamic militancy to justify authoritarianism

Uzbekistan


Formal Name:
Republic of Uzbekistan


Local Name:
Uzbekiston


Local Formal Name:
Uzbekiston Respublikasi

Location:Asia
Status:UN Member Country
Capital City:Tashkent
Main Cities:Samarkand
Population:22,358,000
Area:448,000 km2
Currency:1 som = 100 tiyin
Languages:Uzbek, Russian
Religions:Sunni Muslim





Corruption


Only Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iraq and Somalia are more corrupt according to theTransparency International Corruption Percentage Index.


In the 2010 Transparency International Corruption Percentage Index Uzbekistan ranked 172nd out of 178 (177 is not on list...conspiracy!). One rank above Iraq and one below Turkemnistan













Torture For Hire


Memos 'prove evidence used from Uzbek secret police'










Published on Saturday 31 December 2005 01:46



Key points



• Former Uzbekistan ambassador leaks confidential documents on internet

• Data shows UK used information obtained by torture in war on terror

• Murray also writing book based on experiences as ambassador

Key quote

"The
Foreign Office can take me to court to try to stop me getting any money
from the book. They could also take me to court under the Official
Secrets Act and try to put me in prison. But this is such a hot question
about torture and intelligence, I don't think I have any choice but to
publish. They can do their worst." - CRAIG MURRAYStory
in full A FORMER British ambassador has defied the Foreign Office and
published damning confidential documents which he says show the
government knowingly used intelligence obtained by torture overseas.


UZBEKISTAN: Islamic and Christian literature ordered destroyed
In two separate cases in February, in different regions of
Uzbekistan, courts have ordered religious literature confiscated from
four Muslim women and a Protestant destroyed, Forum 18 News Service has
learned.