Saodat Rakhimbayeva says she wishes she had died with her newborn baby. The 24-year-old housewife had a Caesarean section in March and gave birth prematurely to her son Ibrohim, who died three days later. Then came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile. The doctor told her the hysterectomy was necessary to remove a potentially cancerous cyst, while she believes he sterilised her as part of a state campaign to reduce birthrates. "He never asked for my approval, never ran any checks, just mutilated me as if I were a mute animal," the pale and fragile Mrs Rakhimbayeva said. "I should have just died with Ibrohim." According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Mrs Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilised without their knowledge or consent. Human rights advocates and doctors say autocratic president Islam Karimov this year ramped up a sterilisation campaign he initiated in the late 1990s. In a decree in February, the health ministry ordered all medical facilities to "strengthen control over the medical examination of women of childbearing age". It did not specifically mandate sterilisations, but critics allege that doctors have come under direct pressure from the government to perform them: "The order comes from the very top," said Khaitboy Yakubov, head of the Najot human rights group in Uzbekistan. The Central Asian nation of 27 million has a population density among the world's highest in areas such as the fertile Ferghana Valley. Rights groups say the government is dealing with poverty, unemployment and severe economic and environmental problems that have triggered an exodus of Uzbek migrants to Russia and other countries. Heightening the government's fears is the spectre of legions of jobless men in predominantly Muslim Uzbekistan succumbing to the lure of Islamic radical groups. Uzbekistan once had one of the Soviet Union's highest birthrates, four to five children per woman.
Scotsman
