Czech ombudsman for Romea.cz: The Health Ministry's ineffectiveness threatens the delivery of justice to the victims of forced sterilizations

The law on compensating illegally sterilized women, according to Stanislav Křeček, aims to correct an historical failure of state power and to provide justice. Despite lengthy negotiations and many hopeful expectations after the law was adopted in 2021, the reality of its execution has proved quite different: The compensation process is slow and encumbered by many administrative barriers.

“It was exactly the state itself that failed in the past, and this compensation must represent an effective means of redress. Because the requests are being handled so slowly, its effectiveness as an apology and as satisfaction for the victims is degraded,” the Public Defender of Rights told news server Romea.cz.

In this context, Křeček stresses that the state should approach illegally sterilized women with the helpfulness necessary to the effective redress of its past failures. “This legislation is not fulfilled just through its mere adoption, or through the institution of this opportunity for these women to ask for compensation for their illegally performed sterilizations, rather, it is fulfilled through how it concretely materializes with respect to each particular story,” explained the ombudsman.

Lack of people at the Health Ministry is no excuse

The Public Defender of Rights considers the ineffective, slow processing of these compensation requests to be the biggest problem preventing the fulfillment of the goal of the law. The Health Ministry explains this serious situation by referring to the low number of its staff who have an opportunity to review the requests. According to Křeček, that is an insufficient justification; he considers the delays and obstructions during the processing of the requests unacceptable.

“That cannot be an excuse. There are women who are already at an age when the fast handling of their lawful claims is fatally important. I have already warned the Government of my findings and called on them to take corrective measures – to arrange to beef up the personnel in the Legal Department at the Health Ministry,” Křeček told news server Romea.cz.

The fact that some women who have been subjected to unlawful sterilizations and who are requesting compensation are either elderly or seriously ill was also pointed out on 1 October by the panelists speaking at a public discussion in Prague called “Last Chance – Compensation for Illegally Sterilized Women“, organized by ROMEA. Among those speaking were a lawyer from the League of Human Rights (LLP) and the Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs as well as a representative of the Dentons Law Office, which is collaborating pro bono on these cases with the LLP.

Special cases require special approaches

In his interview with Romea.cz, Křeček recalled the recent ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court on these cases, which said that special situations require special approaches. “This compensation proceeding is not a standard administrative proceeding, but is a specific one because of the specificity of these claims and the peculiarities of the proofs through which the women are able to demonstrate their claims. This places a great demand on the administrative bodies to approach the applicants accommodatingly, above and beyond the legal framework, to give them detailed instructions and aid them by advising them on how to successfully prove their claims,” the ombudsman explained.

The Public Defender of Rights is also warning that when the law was adopted in 2021, it was already clear that many medical records of these sterilizations had been shredded, records which the Health Ministry was still considering to be crucial proof of these claims in the summer of 2024. “These were cases of women who were illegally sterilized, for example, from 1966 – 1970. Records are shredded after 40 years, so in 2021 that deadline had already expired,” Křeček told news server Romea.cz.

In practice, the requests made by women who have had no opportunity to submit their original medical records for this reason were being automatically rejected by the Health Ministry until at least June 2024.

“That practice has been quashed by the Supreme Administrative Court which, in its judgment dated 4 July 2024 (č. j. 9 As 61/2023–65), established the rules for how the ministry is to proceed in cases where these medical records no longer exist or where just part of them have been preserved,” Křeček described the important change to the process of approving compensation requests.

Representatives of the legal organizations and nonprofits aiding these women who attended the “Last Chance” discussion on 1 October in Prague warned that the question of whether this crucial change hasn’t come too late is quite a pressing and urgent one, given that the law is about to expire and the number of compensation requests that have been rejected by the ministry is high.

The ombudsman has had to take advantage of all instruments at his disposal given the Health Ministry’s silence

In a press release of 2 October, Křeček says he has investigated 60 cases of women whose requests for compensation were rejected by the ministry, and the result of that investigation is that in half of those cases, communications with the ministry have “petered out” over the last year [Editor’s Note: As this article was going to press, the Public Defender of Rights did receive a response from the ministry to roughly 10 more cases]. The ombudsman subsequently informed the Government that despite having urged the ministry for responses, he has not received any, neither to his three Final Statements on these cases, nor to his 14 investigation reports on this issue, and he has no information as to how the ministry has been proceeding with another 13 cases.

“I am sorry the Health Minister has failed to respond to my calls and requests for so long. I do not know how to explain this attitude. By informing the Government of this in September, I took advantage of the sanctions process, which is the last tool that is available to me under the law on the Public Defender of Rights, alongside publicizing my findings,” Křeček said.

The situation surrounding the execution of the compensation law will be on the Government’s agenda for its session at the start of November. “I have been invited to the cabinet session on 6 November to discuss this matter and I intend to warn them about this problem there with all urgency,” Křeček told Romea.cz.

The Public Defender of Rights is warning that the current behavior of the state with regard to redressing the wrongdoing caused by the illegal sterilizations does not guarantee the victims will get justice.

“I am supporting the calls of the nonprofit organizations so as to preserve the certainty of everybody to whom the law applies that their rights will be protected,” Public Defender of Rights Stanislav Křeček told news server Romea.cz.