 
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Activists making gains against ancient rite of mutilation
Sunday, February 25, 2001
By Philip Smucker, Special to the Post-Gazette
BENI SUEF, Egypt -- In a sign of hope for tens of millions of African women, Egyptian activists have begun to eradicate female circumcision, an archaic pre-Islamic practice also known as female genital mutilation.
Philip Smucker is a free-lance writer based in Cairo, Egypt, who writes frequently for the Post-Gazette.
The operation, carried out by doctors, midwives and even local barbers on the vast majority of women here, involves removing parts of a woman's sexual anatomy, beginning with the clitoris. The exact origin of FGM remains a matter of wide speculation, but in most countries where it is prevalent, including Egypt, most men and women believe in the myth that uncircumcised women will become "nymphomaniacs" and engage in affair after affair to satisfy their untamed desires.
Thought by Western scholars to date back to the age of the Egyptian pharaohs, FGM affects 120 million African women -- 2 million more annually -- in villages that run down the Nile River into the heart of Africa, affecting 22 nations, including Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya.
International activists see the successes in Egypt, where a U.S. government-funded survey just four years ago showed eight in 10 adult women approving of the practice, as the best sign yet that a community-based propaganda campaign against female circumcision can eliminate it.
Activists point to fresh public surveys in Egypt that show several million more women in a country of 65 million persons to be repudiating FGM. In some of Egypt's remote governorates, like Beni Suef, where the practice was most widespread, but where activists are united and well-funded by foreign dollars, the results are far better, approaching a level of 75 percent eradication in some villages.
"We have been sacrificing our daughters to the River Nile in a pre-Islamic, animist rite of passage but that is now changing," said Marie Assaad, the Cairo-based coordinator of the "Task Force Against FGM."
Assaad and other top organizers of Egypt's grass-roots revolt are not as quick to sing the praises of the central government -- which some of them believe is still dragging its feet in the war against FGM -- as they are to give credit to homegrown activists like Farha Moris.
She is one of several women in Beni Suef who have undergone the operation but have now turned into its greatest opponents and who are succeeding to persuade others to join them in their struggle.
Now 20-years-old, Farha did not speak of her own horrific experience until she met Sister Joann Salib, a modest but determined Coptic nun who heads a coalition of Christian and Islamic groups working against the practice.
Six months later, Farha had her first chance to save a relative from the local barber, the citizen of her village who usually performs the operations. The opportunity presented itself in her own home. Farha recalled how the local barber, carrying his kit of blades, arrived early that evening.
"My uncle invited the barber over to circumcise his daughter, my first cousin, Reda," she said. To make sure the procedure went smoothly, Farha's uncle also invited a male neighbor to hold the 11-year-old down during the operation, also known as a clitoridectomy.
"I told Reda, using sign language, that they were preparing to 'cut' her but my uncle saw me and he told me not to interfere. Reda was shaking and she ran out into the cornfields. My uncle ran after her, leaving me alone with the barber in the house."
Farha's fury rose to the surface. She began hurling insults at the perplexed barber. "I told him he had some nerve taking his 'blood money' to do what he did. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and the entire neighborhood gathered around my home to listen."
"I looked outside at all the women gathered around our front door and screamed, 'Don't let him do this to your daughters!' "
As Farha lectured the women, her uncle caught up with Reda and realized that his daughter was so terrified that it would not be possible to carry out the operation that day. He decided to wait one day and invite the barber back when the neighborhood settled down.
When Farha's father arrived home, she confronted him with the stark details of what had happened and eventually persuaded him to speak with his brother, which he did. "He convinced my uncle not to have the barber cut Reda," she said.
Since saving Reda from the barber, Farha has devoted herself to the fight against FGM
Egyptian government health officials say the grass-roots struggle against FGM is crucial to eliminating the practice for good.
"We believe that, for now, the public campaign against FGM is more important than the actual punishment of the perpetrators," said Dr. Tarek M. Morrssy, the Executive Director of a U.N.-funded anti-FGM program.
Egypt's Ministry of Health has with U.N. and U.S. money begun extensive education campaigns, also pushing to get the voices of anti-FGM activists into the mainstream media. In doing so, government health officials say they hope to influence the FGM battle in the trenches of both remote villages and in Egypt's conservative, male-dominated Parliament, which has yet even to consider passing a law banning the practice outright.
