Sterilized more than 30 years ago because she was Roma, Anna Adamova has been asking for compensation since September from the Czech Republic, which is doing its best to repair the trauma of the eugenics policy implemented under communism.
"They ruined my life," the 55-year-old told AFP, recalling the operation she underwent just after the birth of her fourth child.
A resident of a town northeast of Prague called Ralsko, she is one of more than 2,300 Czechs who have filed a claim since the introduction in 2022 of a law granting 300,000 crowns (12,000 euros) to each victim, which she learned about by chance on Facebook.
Although the Czech Republic stands out in Central Europe for these compensation measures, the associations denounce flaws in the procedure, which Parliament must extend soon, the deadline for submitting a request having expired at the beginning of January.
– Cursed day –
How many in total were affected? No figures are known: the Czechoslovak communist regime provided for "sterilization bonuses" and encouraged social workers to limit the fertility of Roma.
Some women could neither read nor write, others had not received sufficient information or had any real time to think, even though they were entering the hospital for something completely different.
This practice, initiated in 1971, continued even after the democratic transition and the separation of Czechoslovakia into two states (Czech Republic and Slovakia). It continued in a variable manner depending on the medical establishment until 2007.
That fateful day in 1991 still haunts Anna Adamova today: she was threatened with having her baby taken away if she refused to be sterilized.
"I was scared so I accepted, without knowing what the word meant," she explains. Her partner at the time, with whom she was surviving in precarious conditions, left her.
"In our country, we consider that a sterile woman is good for nothing," she says, even though she comes from a large family, regretting that she subsequently had difficulty finding a new partner.
Currently unemployed, she is still waiting for her money, which she hopes to pass on to her children and grandchildren.
– “Ignored Testimonies” –
Elena Gorolova, 56, had her uterus removed after giving birth to her second son, aged just 21.
"Sign it or you die," a nurse orders her, handing her the consent document "whose content she had no idea about." "I would have loved to have a daughter... I will live with this for the rest of my life," she regrets.
Having become a spokesperson for this cause, she deplores the slowness of the procedure. Often, the green light comes too late and the victim is dead.
The Roma, officially 22,000 in this country of 10.9 million inhabitants but in reality many more according to estimates giving the figure of 250,000, are still subject to discrimination and the activist believes that "the testimonies of women are ignored".
She said the government rejected requests based on medical records that are automatically destroyed after 40 years.
More than a third of the approximately 1,600 cases already processed have been declared inadmissible.
And activist Gwendolyn Albert says she is "constantly contacted by people who have been victims of these practices in Slovakia and who ask if they can access the procedure, which is not the case."
Faced with the backlog of cases, Michael O'Flaherty, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, last year asked Prime Minister Petr Fiala for additional time and denounced "gaps in the procedure".
However, the European Roma Rights Centre already pointed out in 2004 that a right to reparation was necessary.
According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Ondrej Jakob, the number of applications submitted is higher than expected.
He says the number of dedicated officials has been increased, a hotline has been set up and seminars have been organised for NGOs involved in the process.
But after decades of fighting for victim status, Gorolova says she is skeptical about the promised improvements.
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