WUNRN
FGM - CAMPAIGNERS AGAINST FGM FACE
ABUSE, VIOLENCE, DEATH THREATS, & INTIMIDATION
Women who speak out against barbaric operations
against young girls face danger and abuse from their own ethnic groups
Efua Dorkenoo says women face
abuse, physical violence and sometimes have to move home if the speak out
against FGM. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
By Amelia Hill – The Guardian – 8
May 2013
Girls and women
who speak out against female genital mutilation are being attacked, abused and
harassed by members of their communities determined to keep the crime a secret.
The Guardian has spoken to women who have received death threats, been
publicly assaulted and who have had to move house after speaking out about FGM,
which involves cutting away some or all of a girl's external genitalia and can
include sewing up the vagina. It is mostly carried out on girls some time
between infancy and the age of 15.
Nimko Ali, a
29-year-old British-Somalian, was taken to Somalia for the procedure when she was
seven. "I never told anyone I had FGM, not even my best friend, because I
saw what happened to women in the UK who did speak out and saw it as a warning
sign," said Ali, who has set up a group called Daughters of Eve to
campaign against the procedure.
"I only decided to go public very recently after seeing other girls
put themselves in danger by speaking out. The weeks afterwards were the most
horrifying of my life. I lost friends – one even offered to kill me for
£500."
The abuse, Ali said, had not waned. "A man recently threw a liquid in
my face in the street . I was terrified; I thought it was acid. He was screaming
that I was 'a slag' and needed to learn some shame."
FGM is not condoned by any religion. It is illegal in the UK to carry out
the procedure, take a British citizen abroad to have the operation, or assist
in carrying out FGM abroad, whether or not it is against the law in that
country.
But although almost 160 incidents were recorded in the 2008-09 British
crime survey, there have been no convictions since it was criminalised in 1985.
Although FGM is incorporated into child protection, at present no data is
collected on the number or type of social-work cases involving it in the
Efua Dorkenoo,
a director at Equality Now,
regularly receives death threats aimed at stopping her campaigns against FGM.
"I'm told my offence in speaking out is greater than that of Salman
Rushdie and that I should die," she said.
"Any woman or girl who speaks out against FGM is in very serious
danger from extended members of their family, their neighbours and from their
community, especially from so-called gatekeepers of their community who control
and harass them if they raise their voices.
The intimidation is extreme. Girls and women are physically attacked in the
street and followed at night. The windows of their houses are broken. They
receive anonymous phone calls from men shouting intimidation and threats.
One woman was pushed to the ground and kicked – she had a child who was
threatened too, and she ended up having to move house.
"You can't speak out against it without risking your life. I'm aware
of three young girls who are currently in care for this very reason."
Dorkenoo says
the backlash against women who speak out is getting more extreme. "It's
getting worse for young girls because social media means they can be threatened
and harassed by people outside of their community, including by family members
back in Africa who are told what they're
doing."
The first and only
major piece of FGM research at a national level was in 2007 by the charity Forward, in
collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the
department of midwifery at
The research, which used the 2001 census, found there were at least 66,000
women with FGM estimated to be living in
It identified around 21,000 girls aged eight or younger at high risk of
FGM. It also found that more than 11,000 girls aged nine or over had a high
probability of already having suffered FGM.
Muna Hassan, an
18-year-old member of the charity Integrate Bristol, a
charity that helps young people from other countries and cultures, has suffered
for her outspoken support of the group's campaign against FGM. "Men harass
and intimidate us girls all the time," she said.
"We made a film about FGM called Silent Scream and they spread rumours
that we were being paid to make a pornographic film. They rang our fathers
anonymously and said we were humiliating our families in public.
"It horrified our parents and quite a few girls weren't allowed to do
the project any more because of it.
"These are people who promote themselves as community leaders and
elders. The scary thing is that these are the people that councillors and
politicians go to when they want to discuss community issues."
Last week, prosecutors and police announced that they were to reopen
investigations into six alleged FGM incidents between 2009 and 2012.
A separate inquiry is under way into an alleged conspiracy to carry out FGM
on a girl in