HEALTH & SCIENCE
28
Monday, July 19, 2010
Uzbek women accuse state of mass sterilizations GULISTAN: Saodat Rakhimbayeva says she wishes she had died with her newborn baby. The 24-year-old housewife had a cesarean section in March and gave birth to Ibrohim, a premature boy 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 sterilized 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 Rakhimbayeva said through tears while sitting at a fly-infested cafe in this central Uzbek city. “I should have just died with Ibrohim.” According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilized without their knowledge or consent in a program designed to prevent overpopulation from fueling unrest. Human rights advocates and doctors say autocratic President Islam Karimov this year ramped up a sterilization campaign he initiated in the late 1990s. In a decree issued in February, the Health Ministry ordered all medical facilities to “strengthen control over the medical examination of women of childbearing age.” The decree also said that “surgical contraception should be provided free of charge” to women who volunteer for the procedure. It did not specifically mandate sterilizations, 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. Uzbek authorities ignored numerous requests by The Associated Press to comment on the issue. Most Western media organizations have been driven from the country, and government officials face serious reprisals for contacts with foreign journalists. However, the AP was able to interview several doctors, sterilized women and a former health official, some on condition of anonymity. This Central Asian nation of 27 million is the size of California or Iraq, and population density in areas such as the fertile Ferghana Valley is among the world’s highest. Rights groups say the government is dealing with poverty, unemployment and severe economic and environmental problems that have triggered an exodus of Uzbek labor migrants to Russia and other countries. Heightening the government’s fears is the specter of legions of jobless men in predominantly Muslim Uzbekistan succumbing to the lure of Islamic radical groups with ties to Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida. Uzbekistan is not alone in coming under allegations of using sterilizations to fight population growth: Authorities in China’s Guangdong Province were accused by Amnesty International in April of carrying out coerced sterilizations to meet family planning goals. But no other country is known to use that method as a government policy. Uzbekistan once had one of the Soviet Union’s highest birthrates, four to five children per woman, and Communist authorities
even handed out medals to “heroine” mothers of six or more. Young army conscripts from Uzbekistan and the four other Central Asian republics made up for a declining ethnic Russian population. Now, as authorities try to unravel that legacy, the birthrate has dropped to about 2.3 children per woman _ still higher than the rate of 2.1 that demographers consider sufficient to replenish a falling population. The sterilization campaign involves thousands of governmentemployed medical doctors and nurses who urge women of childbearing age, especially those with two or more children, to have hysterectomies or fallopian tube ligations, said Sukhrobjon Ismoilov of the Expert Working Group, an independent think tank based in the capital, Tashkent. The surgeon in Rakhimbayeva’s case, a burly man in his 40s named Kakhramon Fuzailov, refused to comment on her claims and threatened to turn an AP reporter over to the police for “asking inappropriate questions.” In 2007, the UN Committee Against Torture reported a “large number” of cases of forced sterilization and removal of reproductive organs in Uzbek women, often after cesarean sections. Some women were abandoned by their husbands as a result, it said. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Karimov, a former Communist functionary, remained at the helm and retained many Soviet features, such as strict government control of public health. Government-paid doctors and nurses are assigned to each district or village. Family planning is far different from Western norms. Instead of focusing on raising awareness of
widely available condoms or birth-control pills, the Health Ministry has chosen to promote uteral resections nationwide as the most reliable method of contraception. Some women do volunteer. Khalida Alimova, 31, a plump, vivacious sales manager from Tashkent, agreed to a resection in March, almost a year after her third child was born. She said her husband, Alisher Alimov, 32, an occasional cab driver who spends days playing backgammon with his friends, refused to use condoms or allow her to take birth-control pills. “Now I feel relieved,” Alimova said over a cup of green tea in the kitchen of their shabbily furnished Tashkent apartment. She added, though, that she never told her husband about the operation. Many other women, especially from poor rural areas, say they face coercion from health workers or even potential employers to agree to sterilization. A 31-year-old mother of two from the eastern Uzbek city of Ferghana said the director of a kindergarten where she sought a job told her to show a certificate confirming she had been sterilized. After consulting her disabled husband, who receives a government pension of $40 a month, she said she agreed to the procedure, produced the certificate and got the job. “We just had no choice,” the woman, who gave only her first name Matluba, said by telephone from the eastern city of Ferghana. She refused to provide her last name or identify the kindergarten for fear of being fired. Several health workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity also because they feared dismissal or persecution, said the authorities are especially eager to sterilize women
with HIV, tuberculosis or a drug addiction. Instruments often are not sterilized properly and can infect other women, they said. Inexperienced medical workers can also cause serious health complications. “Any negligence can do a lot of damage,” said Shakhlo Tursunova, a gynecologist from Tashkent. Health workers involved in the campaign are threatened with salary cuts, demotion or dismissal if they do not persuade at least two women a month to be sterilized, a former high-ranking Health Ministry official told the AP on condition of anonymity. Veronika Tretyakova, a 32-year-old doctor from Tashkent, said she came under pressure from health workers to be sterilized. “The nurse said, ‘They would hang me if I let you have another child,”‘ Tretyakova said. “I told her to think about her soul.” Tradition plays a strong role in this male-dominated society, where a large family is seen as a blessing from God, and women are often blamed for childless marriages. After checking out of the maternity hospital in Gulistan where she lost her son, Rakhimbayeva said she shared her anguish with her husband, Ulmas, a 29year-old bus driver who refused to be interviewed for this story. Their marriage was arranged by their parents in 2008. Instead of consoling her, she said, he told her to move back to her parents’ house and wait for divorce papers as he did not want to live with a barren wife. “He never even questioned why the doctors maimed me, just blamed everything on me,” Rakhimbayeva said wringing her hands. “Now I have no hope of having children, no job, no future.”— AP
Too soon to see a ‘silver lining’ in the disaster: Cousteau
Cousteau scion hopes oil spill boosts awareness WASHINGTON: The Gulf of Mexico calamity could be a catalyst for greater understanding of the marine environment, says Philippe Cousteau, grandson of ocean explorer J acques Cousteau and member of a family devoted to the sea. “What is the legacy of this oil spill? I hope this reminds us of the true cost of our addiction to fossil fuels,” Cousteau said in an interview w ith AFP. “I hope this adds to the dialogue and gets us to realize w e need to get off fossil
fuels, that there are alternatives. I hope it reminds us of the need to reconsider how w e exploit our oceans.” Cousteau, w ho heads an environmental group called EarthEcho International and is chief ocean correspondent for Discovery’s Planet Green, said it is too soon to see a “silver lining” in the disaster. “I can’t talk about a silver lining w hen people are suffering so much,” he said.
GULF OF MEXICO: A boat with the Vessel of Opportunity (L) stands by while oil and gas is flared off during a controlled In-situ burn which supports in the cleanup of surface oil from the BP spill on Saturday in the Gulf of Mexico. — AFP
Nations to seek clean energy cooperation WASHINGTON: The world’s top economies will look next week at ways to work together on clean energy, striking a rare note of cooperation amid an impasse in drafting a new climate change treaty. Energy ministers or senior officials from 21 nations will gather today and tomorrow in Washington in an initiative by President Barack Obama’s administration, which has made the creation of green jobs a top priority. The US Energy Department said the two-day meeting will feature announcements of joint initiatives among the major economies, who together account for 80 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Major economies have been at loggerheads over the shape of the next climate treaty, with developed nations seeking binding commitments from emerging economies such as China to cut carbon emissions blamed for global warming. Clean energy has been considered one area of common interest. Obama signed a five-year, 150 million-dollar plan during a trip to China last year for the world’s two biggest polluters to collaborate on developing electric cars and clean coal. “The development of clean energy
and energy-efficient technologies could spur the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at the White House on Friday. “The race is wide open for which country will become the epicenter of clean energy innovation, and the destination for the capital, businesses and jobs that come with it.” The Obama administration has often bemoaned that the United States is behind many European and Asian nations in developing green technology. But it said the meeting will look at ways in which nations can work together. Areas for discussion include energy-efficiency standards, solar and wind power, and ways to provide energy to those without, said David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy for international affairs. Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, doubted the meeting would sort out thorny issues in the talks to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations run out in 2012. “But if this is the low-hanging fruit that can show that countries can cooperate to get something done together, that could improve the mood,”
he said. Terje Riis-Johansen, Norway’s minister for petroleum and energy, praised the United States for convening the meeting and hoped it would “establish a global partnership to raise production of and access to clean energy.” “A greater reliance on clean energy is needed to solve climate change,” he said. The minister also plans to visit New Orleans to learn lessons of the BP spill for Norway, whose oil and gas industry is almost entirely offshore. The countries taking part in the talks are Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger will also participate. Indonesia was invited but its minister had a scheduling conflict, Sandalow said. The meeting in Washington comes as Obama presses Congress to approve the first-ever US plan to require carbon emission cuts. The House of Representatives approved a plan more than a year ago, but legislation has faced dogged opposition in the Senate. — AFP
“I do think it is a stark reminder of the problems, and I hope we can leverage this disaster in order to deal with those issues and invest in science. “We spend a thousand times more money on space exploration than on ocean exploration. Whether there is water on Mars is not critical to our future, but having healthy oceans is,” he said. “My hope is that the next generation will wise up and understand that this is not a sustainable way we are living.” Cousteau is not a scientist, but views his work as educating the public on the importance of the environment, especially oceans. He is continuing the efforts of his grandfather, the famed French explorer, and his father, Philippe Sr, who died in a 1979 flying boat crash. “Just like my father and grandfather, I see my work as storytelling,” Cousteau said from California, where he was on a tour to speak to schoolchildren. After the spill began, the 30year-old Cousteau decided to dive in-literally. “I packed a bag and camera and went down and said I have to tell the story. I think (my father and grandfather) would have done the same thing.” What Cousteau saw was horrific but insightful. His footage was used for ABC and CNN television. “What I was worried about was what was happening underneath the surface,” he said. “No one had been diving in an oil spill and filmed it. He said the expeditions revealed “our worst fears realized,” noting the “swollen clouds of toxic soup” that resulted from oil mixed with chemical dispersants. “It was like a chunky red soup, with clouds billowing around us. As we suspected at the time, these cloud plumes were distributed throughout the water column,” he said. During the dive which took weeks to prepare, Cousteau and his team wore full hazmat diving suits and heavy hard hat helmets weighing some 30 pounds (15 kilos). “This was one of the most terrible experiences of my life seeing first hand what this oil spill looks like under the water and knowing that this contamination is spreading over hundreds of miles,” he wrote on his blog. In a dozen or so trips to the Gulf of Mexico, Cousteau said he found dead fish and jellyfish and a catastrophe for the environment overall that will take many years to repair even if BP has finally succeeded in staunching the leak. “We’re all keeping our fingers crossed. This is still far from over,” he said. “Even if the oil is stopped, 170 million gallons have come into the Gulf. This disaster is spreading. From oystermen in Apalachicola (Florida) to souvenir shops in Alabama, this is going to have a long term impact. It’s a human tragedy.”— AFP
BREZE: This picture taken on July 3, 2010 shows a picture of a brown bear on a board and a graffiti reading “Kills” near the village of Breze in the Rhodope mountains, southeast from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. — AFP
Bear problem in Bulgaria divides locals, authorities KUTELA: “The bear ate Kolyo, now it’s our turn because nobody wants to do anything,” fumed Sasho Kolev, 80, after the recent killing of a man in the remote Bulgarian village of Kutela by a protected brown bear. “They love bears, these city people, they don’t care about us villagers,” he added, complaining about local authorities and environmentalists who would not allow a cull of the bear population. Bulgaria is home to between 600 and 800 brown bears, one of the largest populations in Europe, according to environmentalists, while hunting unions put the numbers at around 1,000. As a protected species, the brown bear is banned from being hunted unless a special permit is obtained from the authorities. Bulgarian bears are rarely aggressive and would rather run away from people than attack, experts insist. But the killing in midMay of Nikola Shikov, a 65-year-old villager who knew his way around the woods, plunged Kutela, perched on the steep slopes of the country’s southern Rhodope mountains, into panic. Shikov was found dead in the forest just 500 metres (yards) from the tiny community of 400 residents, with multiple fractures and wounds, his face horribly disfigured. Fears were fueled by two more attacks this week in the region, though neither was fatal-yet. Galina Ivanova, 64, however, was fighting for her life with multiple injures after a bear lunged at her on Wednesday while she was picking mushrooms near the village of Malka Arda, just east of Kutela, regional officials said. They said the bear stripped the skin off the back of her head and clawed at her entire body before Ivanova’s sister managed to scare off the beast by shouting and throwing rocks. The day before, 56-year-old Boyan Dimitrov had a close call also picking mushrooms near the village of Borovina, in the same region. The Focus news agency, quoting the local mayor, said a bear struck Dimitrov but the blow sent him rolling down a steep gully, which saved his life. In Kutela and nearby villages, where people’s livelihood is often limited to logging, raising cows and picking herbs and mushrooms, locals told AFP they were now scared to go into the forest. “We’re not against bears being a protected species. But they are breeding like crazy and this has to be regulated in some way,” said 36year-old Biser, a Kutela villager who gave only his first name but said his mother was once chased by a bear. The authorities’ greenlight to shoot the bear that
attacked Shikov will not solve the problem, he added. And with the further attacks, authorities now question whether the animal that was killed was indeed the “killer” bear. In Smolyan district, some 150 bears roam the forests and regularly attack beehives and livestock, according to the chief of the regional environment inspection agency Elen Minchev. The killing in Kutela was the first in decades however, he said. ‘Imagine meeting it face to face’- Local authorities and environmentalists insist there has been no recent boom in the bear population. But they have now joined forces to appease the worried villagers, instructing them on how to avoid accidents, protect their herds and beehives, apply for compensation, and even attract tourists. “Much of the damage can... be avoided if only people remember to make an effort to protect their livestock in bear-populated regions — keep shepherd dogs, build fences and never leave their herds unattended,” said Diana Zlatanova from the Balkani wildlife society. Brochures advising how to avoid encounters with bears and what to do in the event of one, will also be distributed in high-risk areas over the coming months. A joint project by Balkani and the environment ministry is already distributing free electric fences to beekeepers in Smolyan and the nearby town of Devin. Vasil Chavdarov from the tiny village of Breze told AFP he was “calmer” now that his beehives were equipped with an electric fence, although he still spoke of the bears with awe. “I used to sleep here every night for two months, kept a fire and packs of firecrackers to scare the bears away,” said the 78-year-old, who had nine beehives wrecked by bears in four separate attacks over the past years. “I am happy that the bear does not come to do mischief any more.” “It gives me chills only to mention its name, I cannot imagine meeting it face to face in the forest,” he added. Meanwhile, local hunters were taking another approach and trying to convince reluctant locals that they could cash in on the bears and boost tourism. Much to the dismay of the locals, the hunters were already advertising pricey observation tours of bears, wild boars, deer and other animals. But it will take time to overcome the tension over bears, following the Kutela killing. “We entertain no illusions that we can defuse the tensions with brochures, especially in regions where people feel threatened,” Svetlana Alajem, manager of an educational project about bears, told AFP. “But it is a step in the right direction.” — AFP
ESCH: Two hundred people participate in the World Record attempt to get the most people ever in a pool of mud at the same time in Esch yesterday. — AFP