Quipu - Calls for Justice

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• published: 10 Feb 2017
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Esperanza and Teodula were sterilised without consent more than 18 years ago and are still searching for justice in rural Peru. The Quipu project - www.quipu-project.com - is their phoneline that allows victims across the country to share their shocking testimonies. These are the unwillingly sterilised women fighting for justice in Peru. They are just two of the 300,000 Peruvians affected by the Family Planning Program promoted by Alberto Fujimori’s government in the mid-90s in Peru, which mostly targeted impoverished, rural, indigenous people. Despite several attempts to bring those responsible to justice, the crime of the forced sterilisations remains unpunished and there are still many Peruvians that denied it ever happened. Esperanza and Teodula, together with other affected women, activists and artists, continue the fight for justice through the Quipu project. Esperanza and her local women's organisation have decided to fight for justice and create a communication project -a specially developed phoneline connected to the internet- that allows them to share their stories in their own words and be heard around the country and the world. The testimonies collected by the Quipu project have been listened to in more than 100 countries and help them to appeal to international law in their continuing search for justice. Meanwhile, in October 2015, Keiko Fujimori (daughter of Alberto Fujimori) held a clear lead in the upcoming presidential elections despite having been investigated for corruption several times. Esperanza and the Quipu team travel across Peru to the regions that were most affected by the sterilisation campaign - isolated, rural and impoverished villages in the Andes and Amazon. As they meet more people and hear their stories, the real scale of the campaign starts to be revealed. This short film follows the intimate journeys of these two peasant women fighting for recognition and women’s rights in a male-dominated society, while inviting others to join them in the hope that their voices will no longer be silenced. Find out more about the Quipu project and hear more testimonies on their interactive platform - https://interactive.quipu-project.com/#/en/quipu/intro Commissioned by the Guardian and Bertha Foundation Sign up for our documentary newsletter ► https://www.theguardian.com/info/2016/sep/02/sign-up-for-the-guardian-documentaries-update Guardian documentaries ► http://www.theguardian.com/docs Subscribe to The Guardian ► http://is.gd/subscribeguardian The Guardian ► http://is.gd/guardianhome