Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, Reader in Hispanic Studies from the Department of Modern Languages, will be interviewed on The History Hour on the BBC World Service on Saturday 2 July 2016 at 9.06am, on the forced sterilisation of women in Peru in the 1990s.
The BBC World Service is the world’s largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 29 languages to an average of 210 million people a week. The History Hour looks at history from World War II to the Arab Spring as told by the people who were there.
In the programme, Natalia provides historical background to the case of forced sterilisation of women in the 1990s during the regime of Alberto Fujimori. It is estimated 300,000 women and around 30,000 men were sterilised many without consent, without a proper understanding of what the procedure meant in terms of it being irreversible and under unacceptable hygienic conditions. The victims have been campaigning for redress and in the coming weeks they will receive a formal response from the judiciary. The last two presidential elections have been strongly fought on this issue as Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s daughter, has attempted to be elected. In both cases she failed not least because her opponents promised victims some redress. In the programme Natalia refers to research from 2012 undertaken by University of Kent, Hispanic Studies PhD student, Ines Ruiz.
The programme is available on BBC’s iPlayer here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zdv1h. The section on forced sterilisation in Peru starts at 10.18 minutes into the programme with Natalia’s interview at 19.17 minutes into the programme.