Political Quotes

“I had the opportunity to visit Slovakia in 2009. It was a great opportunity for me to meet with representatives of a country that is a close ally of the United States. Slovakia and the United States share strong ties thanks to the heritage of many Americans whose parents, grandparents or great grandparents came from Slovakia. We are also bound by our common devotion to democracy and human rights. It is an important friendship. My visit to Bratislava gave me a chance to strengthen those ties. It also provided me with an opportunity to share with my Slovak friends concerns I have about the practice of targeting Romani women for sterilization without informed consent--a practice that was documented and condemned by the Charter 77 human rights movement more than 30 years ago. Unfortunately, sterilizations without consent continued to be performed in State-run hospitals in the Czech and Slovak Republics-- reportedly even in this century. This week there has been an important development on that front. On Tuesday, the European Court on Human Rights found that the sterilization without informed consent of a Romani woman had violated article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8, the right to family life. This is an incredibly important victory for a woman who was wrongfully sterilized at the time of the birth of her second child and who has since struggled for 11 years to vindicate this claim.…”