Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) turns worrisome issue in Sierra Leone

November 22, 2011
Awoko.org

An agreement stating that girls under 18 will not undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Sierra Leone was recently signed by village chiefs and other community leaders, including women who perform FGM witnessed by Police, Civil Society and NGO’s.
The agreement affects the Kambia, Port Loko, Western Rural and Western Urban and Pujehun Districts; but Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and FGM is still a worrisome issue to many Sierra Leoneans.
Rugiatu Turay still remembers the pain she felt the day she and four of her sisters and three other girls were dragged to an enclosed hut which looked like a fenced forest at the end of the village locally known as ‘Bondo Bush.’
After few hours, she said “some of the young and aged women intensified their visits to the traditionally hut roofed with elephant grass, singing traditional songs and drumming.”
She said, several women were singing and dancing jubilantly while others were cooking and moving around, suddenly the atmosphere changed.
“We were forcefully bundled together and lined up, moments later we were stripped naked and told to sing and clap as elderly women dressed in rags instruct us.”
Turay also said that some of the women were very tipsy and violent. “I felt humiliated standing in the middle of fifteen women, stack naked on a scruffy environment barefooted,” she broke into tears and wept for around 5, minutes.
Among the eight of us the eldest was about 15 with piercing breast, she said.
Additionally she told AWOKO some of the rural girls were enthusiastic for the mutilation of their genitalia for varied reason, as one of the girls said after Bondo she is going to get married to an uncle’s son who is a leading farmer in the village with two wives. She said other girls believe FGM earns them respect among their peers.
“They used a crude penknife, it was so painful. I bled excessively for two days and fainted when I wanted to walk,” Turay said, describing how at the age of 11 she was subjected to female genital mutilation.
Afterwards the scar itched and got infected. As a result she developed severe menstrual pains, blood clots and a cyst, she said.
When Turay heard her younger sisters were due to undergo genital mutilation too she tried, in vain, to intervene. The death of a cousin, who bled to death after being subjected to the practice, triggered her activism.
Today Turay leads the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM), one of several nongovernmental organizations that campaign in West Africa against the harmful traditional practice of female genital mutilation. She formed the group in 2002 with other women she met in refugee camps in Guinea during Sierra Leone’s 1991 to 2001 civil war. Turay is one of an estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide who have undergone female genital mutilation the removal of all or part of the female external genitalia as part of traditional initiation rituals or marriage preparation customs.
Though the government has forbidden the practice for under age children, some female activists and Non Governmental Organizations are making tremendous efforts in raising awareness, among victims and perpetrators of FGM. According to statistics from the Family Support Unit of the Sierra Leone Police sexual and gender based violence on teenage girls has increased by 18 percent. However the statistics also reveal that for every 1,000 SGBV related cases only 20 is likely to be prosecuted.
Police records show that children from rural areas are more likely to be abused.
It is only through their minds that you can change the attitude of people by talking about the link between FGM and SGBV. Evidence shows that, girls below 18 suffer the most in all forms of SGBV, said a paralegal monitoring SGBV cases.
The United Nations Development Program has funded the Justice Sector Development Project to provide humanitarian and legal aid to SGBV victims with several success stories, but sadly out of court settlements of violations of fundamental human rights has worried many campaigners. At puberty, the majority of girls in Sierra Leone are initiated into the Bondo Society, a secret society of women that uses circumcision to initiate new members to become women.
FGM is a volatile issue in Sierra Leone. In February, four female journalists were brutally attacked by the Bondo Society in Kenema, one of Sierra Leone’s largest cities. The journalists were abducted, stripped, and marched through the city after being accused of reporting on an anti-FGM campaign. Police and human rights organizations intervened to free the women. FGM, partial or total removal of external genitalia, continues to be practiced illegally throughout Africa.
FGM is practiced as a rite of passage in 28 African countries. Approximately three million young women annually are forced to undergo FGM as an initiation into womanhood.
According to WHO, every year two million girls are at risk of being subjected to the practice which is sometimes referred to as female genital cutting or female circumcision.
Sierra Leone is one of 28 African countries where female genital mutilation is practiced. It is also a custom in parts of the Middle East and Asia.
The procedure is usually performed by an elderly woman of the village who has been specially designated this task, or by a traditional birth attendant.
But in some countries more affluent families seek the services of medical personnel to avoid the dangers of unskilled operations in unsanitary conditions.
WHO has consistently condemned the harmful traditional practice as “wilful damage to healthy organs for non-therapeutic reasons.”
In the past, studies have suggested that the practice of female genital mutilation can result in infertility, pregnancy and childbirth complications, and psychological problems through inability to experience sexual pleasure.
In a study published in August this year in the Lancet, researchers made the strongest link yet between extreme forms of female genital mutilation and female infertility.
Their findings provide the most compelling evidence to date that girls who have undergone genital mutilation in childhood could be at risk of infertility later in life.
The new findings have given activists like Turay a much-needed credibility boost.
“We want people to drop their knives; we want parents and girls to become more open about the practice; we want the victims to talk about the practice and to be ready to say ‘no’, so that the government knows women are ready for a change!” Turay said.
In Sierra Leone, female genital mutilation usually takes the form of a crudely performed operation to remove the clitoris sometimes with razor blades, penknives and even with broken glass as a key part of the initiation ceremonies that prepare girls for marriage and motherhood. UNICEF estimates that some 90% of Sierra Leonean women are subjected to genital mutilation. Turay and her fellow campaigners in Sierra Leone believe the best way to raise public awareness about the risks of female genital mutilation is to teach the women designated to perform the procedure to read and write in Sierra Leone these are often illiterate older women and provide them with an alternative source of income.
But convincing people that this ingrained tradition is wrong is an uphill struggle in a country emerging from a decade of civil war, where people long to return to traditional values and where 66% of the population is illiterate, she said.
Turay said there were other positive developments in Sierra Leone and that religious leaders there had started to oppose the harmful practice. “Two Imams have made a public declaration to say that their daughters will never be initiated and other Imams and pastors have started preaching about the practice in their prayer meetings,” she said.
Since AIM was founded in 2002, four activists have left after receiving death threats. Turay said that despite a powerful pro-genital mutilation lobby in Sierra Leone, the campaign is making progress.
“Educating people is empowering them. It is only through their minds that you can change the attitude of people,” Turay said.
Turay and other AIM activists visit villages and talk to the women who earn a living from genital cutting to try to persuade them to give it up. “We have been able to get about 700 practitioners from 111 villages to drop the practice,” she said.
AIM has received funding from donors in the United States to provide 40 of 700 women who perform genital mutilation with alternative employment, but Turay said she did not know how her group would help the remaining 660.
AIM would like to set up a skills training centre to teach the former genital mutilators and girls intent on escaping the practice to read and write, operate computers and make money from agriculture or tie-dying cloth.

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Sierra Leone Youth Call for an End to Female Genital Mutilation

November 30, 2010
The Huffington Post
Chi Mgbako

The perspective often missing in the debate regarding female genital mutilation (FGM), a harmful traditional practice involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitals, is the voice of African youth. My recent experience conducting human rights workshops at schools in the Kambia District of northern Sierra Leone, a West African country where 90% of women have undergone FGM as children, underscores the need to focus on the viewpoints of Africa's youth regarding the practice.

I witnessed hundreds of Sierra Leonean students in sweltering lecture halls and classrooms highlight FGM's physical, sexual, and mental consequences. The workshops were a clarion call from Sierra Leonean youth to end the practice of FGM.

I conducted the workshops in partnership with seasoned Sierra Leonean activists from the anti-FGM organization Centre for Safe Motherhood Youth and Child Outreach ("CESMYCO") but still assumed it would to be difficult for students to speak openly about FGM. But they were eager and willing to discuss the practice.

My partners and I commenced each workshop by asking students to identify traditional practices that affect girls in their communities. We avoided any direct mention of FGM so that the students could initiate the discussion themselves. Almost immediately, and without hesitation, students raised the issue of FGM.

At the Kambia Islamic Secondary School, students highlighted FGM's harmful medical effects. They eagerly raised their hands to note that FGM can "expose girls to disease" due to the re-use of unsanitary razor blades, cause uncontrollable bleeding, have a "negative effect on giving birth," and even result in death.

When students raised the issue of FGM's health consequences, we asked how many students knew a girl who had died after undergoing FGM. Without fail, a flurry of hands would reach for the sky.

At the Madina Secondary School, a student confidently noted that she disagreed with FGM because it "can remove healthy organs." This statement was an insightful repudiation of FGM proponents who argue that female genital cutting and male circumcision are synonymous. They erroneously equate the clitoris, which is indeed a genital organ, with the foreskin of the penis. The correct male equivalent of FGM would be penile amputation.

The students also bravely referred to FGM's negative effects on healthy female sexual functioning. A student at the Kambia Islamic Secondary School stated that she disagreed with FGM because "it decreases sexual urge." At the Federation Junior Secondary School another student shyly said that she objected to the practice because "girls lose feeling." At the Kolenten Senior Secondary School one student boldly stated that FGM "can hurt the child physically and mentally because the clitoris is a sensitive organ connected to the mind." I was deeply impressed with their sophisticated notion of the physical and psychological layers of female sexuality.

The complicated effect of FGM on female sexuality is an often-marginalized aspect of the FGM debate. When I first met Sierra Leonean activist and CESMYCO director Laurel Bangura, who conducted the school workshops with me, she spoke openly about FGM's negative effects on female sexuality. Too often this focus is dismissed as a Western preoccupation. I remember Laurel speaking movingly about the older Sierra Leonean women who had undergone FGM in their girlhoods and still mourn the loss of a part of their sexual lives.

The students who raised the issue of sexuality were making a salient and oft-ignored point - they are forced to undergo a practice that has negative effects on their future sexual functioning at ages when they have no choice in the matter.

In addition to highlighting FGM's physical, mental and sexual effects, the students were also very concerned with FGM's impact on girls' access to education. In Sierra Leone, and in other African countries, FGM "fleeing" stories are common. Young girls who fear the practice will sometimes flee their villages - acts of courage that often disrupt their education. Several years ago, while working on my first FGM project in Sierra Leone, I met a group of young sisters who had fled their village in Magburaka to escape FGM. High-ranking FGM initiators had attempted to force the girls to undergo FGM and begin training to become FGM initiators, which would have halted the girls' formal education. To avoid this fate, the sisters ran away from their village to seek refuge with a human rights organization.

Like the Magburaka girls, student testimonials from our workshops reveal that children are under enormous pressure to undergo FGM even when they have grave misgivings about the practice. In one of the more powerful moments of our workshops, students at the Umuro Muchtarr Muslim Secondary School said they wanted "education" instead of "cutting." "You can go to the bush and [the FGM initiators] can teach you what they want, but they shouldn't touch you," declared a student. The rest of the students burst into applause. They were affirming that traditional rituals from childhood to adulthood should not involve harm.

The final school we visited was different. Gone were the hands eagerly flying into the air to discuss FGM. Gone was the shimmering confidence of the students in the previous schools. Laurel Bangura stepped to the front of the silent classroom and asked how many of the students knew a girl who had died in the bush after undergoing FGM. Many students slowly raised their hands.

Laurel asked, "Is it right for girls to die in the bush because they've been cut?"

"Maybe death is our destiny," one girl softly replied.

"Death should not be any child's destiny," Laurel answered.

I watched the students listening with rapt attention as Laurel made the case against the practice and medicalization of FGM. She spoke, with quiet power, of the human rights of women and girls to integrity and freedom from discrimination. The schoolgirls sat in their white hijab head coverings, like perfect rows of precious eggs, leaning in closer and intently listening with wide, open eyes. 

Sierra Leone: Anti-FGM Campaign Heats Up

Friday September 24, 2010

The Patriotic Vanguard, Sierra Leone News Portal

Maada Gumbu

Katanya Women’s Development Association (KAWDA) one of the leading advocates against Female Genital Mutilation in Sierra Leone has intensified its campaign against the age-old practice despite stiff resistance from traditionalists.

Ann-Marie Caulker, the Executive Director of KAWDA says, “We are not against people in the Bondo Secret Society which practices FGM, but it is the crude way it is done and the resultant effects that are of concern to us.”

She says many children have lost their lives during FGM ceremonies. The age-old practice has been part of Sierra Leonean culture since the pre-colonial era. However, not everything is bad about the society. Some women are taught positive things during the initiation ceremony.

They are taught motherhood, how to become good house wives, cultivation of good citizenship, the role of a woman in society, herbalism and other good virtues that need to be imbibed by women. This is to ensure that by the time they enter marriage they would have learnt many things that they need to know about the real world.

But the FGM practice which has led to harmful effects, has over the past decades aroused concern both locally and across the international scene. Some of the harmful effects that have been observed to result from the practice are: pregnancy- related complications as a result of injuries sustained during the process, contracting HIV/AIDS, chronic infection and in extreme cases deaths, which in many instances are not reported to the police. The practice is common in all the regions of Sierra Leone; even in the capital, Freetown.

Far away at Njala, in the Moyamba district, southwest of the country, some girls were forcibly initiated five months ago and one had to be hospitalized. Another girl, Trina Fatima Kposowa (photo) escaped and has not been seen since. An alarm was raised in the town for her capture, but was nowhere to be found. Some of her relatives were accused of harboring her, an allegation they stoutly rejected. The leader of the Bondo secret society warned that Trina Fatima Kposowa had already become privy to the secrets of the society which is not open to non-initiates and therefore allowing her to go away without initiation would bring evil on the town and the society leaders. She threatened to search for her by all means and pointed out that wherever the girl went there are Bondo Secret society members there, so it was a folly for her to run away.

A new law has been enacted in Sierra Leone making it unlawful for a girl below eighteen years to be initiated. In other words, she has to reach the age in which she can freely make a choice of her own ; whether to be initiated or not. But Anti-FGM campaigners say even at eighteen, girls face the risk of dying especially with the crude method of mutilation. They pointed out that in many rural areas there are no medical facilities and the blades used are most times rusty and contagious. Some campaigners have pointed out the painful ordeals girls have revealed. Female Genital Mutilation is also known as Female Genital Cutting.

Apparently, this (the cutting) has been the cause for Trina Fatima Kposowa’s flight. Campaigners, including KAWDA, say successive governments have been reticent over the issue because of political reasons. Either they fear resistance from the members or because of massive support for the society they are a force to reckon with in the political dispensation of the country. Any attempt to offend the members will apparently lead to social disorder or political suicide.

The family of Trina Fatima is reported to be worried about her whereabouts. Campaigners say something needs to be done about the situation. “If she is seen today, she will definitely be initiated,” says one family member.

FGM: The Fight is Ongoing

September 8, 2010 

Hindowa E. Saidu / Sierra  Express Media

Foundation for Democratic Initiatives and Development FDID is happy that other well meaning organizations have joined in the fight against FGM.

Let me use this opportunity to applaud AMNET and UNDP in their collaborative effort which led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the heads of the Bondo society” Soweis” in the Port Loko district.

FGM has been a serious concern and it continues to be a serious concern for all of us as a nation.

Even as I am putting pen to paper an initiation ceremony is taking place at Dowsaz farm here in the country’s capital. It is heart rendering to note that there are initiates as young as age nine undergoing this very harmful traditional practice. One thing we want to make clear is that we are not fighting the traditional beliefs of our people but it is rather too crude to initiate children of that tender age who cannot give consent in such circumstances.

In Sierra Leone, Lunsar Residents Schooled on Dangers of FGM

December 1, 2009

By Augustine Samba, Awareness Time - Sierra Leone News & Information

A number of residents of Lunsar Town in the Marampa Chiefdom, Port Loko District last Wednesday benefited from a one-day training workshop on Female Genital Mutilation otherwise known as (FGM) its related issues. Female Genital Mutilation is the removal of all or part of the female clitoris.

The training which was organized by the Port Loko District Development Organization (PLDDO) in the Ebenezer Church hall in Lunsar was attended by local authorities, heads of secret societies, teachers and school pupils especially girls.

Training consultant, Mr. Thomas Sesay told the participants that FGM has a devastating effect on the health of women and especially the girl child who are at risk throughout their life.

"This is a harmful traditional practice that has been legitimized in our normal cultural beliefs and social institutions," Mr. Sesay said.

The perpetrators of FGM according to Mr. Sesay are parents, care-givers, secret society leaders (soweis, poros) and members in the different communities.

On child/adult sexual abuse, Mr. Sesay said parents, care-givers and members of communities should protect children below age 18 from having sex with adults.

On his part, the Executive Director of PLDDO, Mohamed Sanyoha Bangura said the practice of FGM and other its related dangers would only be eliminated if national and local authorities take the lead on the campaign against it.

Mr. Bangura also said victims of Gender Based Violence (GBV) should be empowered against stigma and discrimination and that adequate awareness and sensitization on GBV and training and empowering perpetrators as an alternative for income generation should be done.

Ending FGM in Sierra Leone

Posted by Sulakshana Gupta on Monday, October 12, 2009

Recently some progress has been made towards eliminating FGM in Sierra Leone, by addressing the women that actually perform the ceremony, the sowies (initiators). Many have agreed to stop forcing girls below the age of 18 to undergo circumcision. Also, in some parts of the country they've consented to give it up as altogether if provided an alternate source of livelihood.

Human rights groups have been beating their drums against FGM for years. The process of initiation has less controversial aspects, such as training in singing, dancing and how to manage household chores, but it's the actual circumcision part that is hotly debated.

One of the main concerns is the initiation of teenage girls. Traditionally, young girls are taken into the bush as soon as they hit puberty, although different ethnic groups do it at different ages. Some initiate girls as young as three and five and sometimes even a month-old baby.

In 2007, the Government of Sierra Leone passed the Child Rights Act, which prohibits acts of cruelty against children. The Act doesn't explicitly decry FGM, presumably because the practice enjoys a considerable amount ofpolitical endorsement. A number of local NGOs, however, have been travelling around the country sensitizing sowies about child rights and the need for informed consent to circumcision. As a result, a growing number are on board with only initiating adult women.

I met with one of these NGOs in the village of Grafton in the outskirts of Freetown. The group is Sabi Yu Right (Know Your Rights) and they've registered 60 initiators in the vicinity from the two main ethnic groups in Sierra Leone, the Mendes and the Temnes. Haja Konneh, head initiator of the Mendes in Grafton, says that they had signed a memorandum of understanding with Sabi Yu Right that stated they would only initiate girls who came in willingly and were over 18. 'Sometimes a girl who is 17 comes in but we send her back and tell her to come back in a year,' she says. Soko Kamara, the Temne chief, adds that it is easier to conduct the ceremony if the woman is emotionally mature, instead of a wailing adolescent who doesn't understand what is happening to her. [...]

Female Genital Mutilation

August 5, 2009

While Ugandan leader, Yoweri Museveni, criticized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and slapped a ban on the age old practice in many African tribes, some traditionalists are set to resist the decree. The ban in Uganda coincides with the season for administering the practice targeting teenage girls (14 - 18years).

“I support culture, but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific information. There is no part of a human body that is useless," Museveni told a gathering in the Nakapiripiriti district home to pastoralist ethnic groups: Sabinys, Pokots and Karamojong, after some elders told him that the practice is part of their culture.

"There is no part of a human body that is useless, Museveni told the predominantly peasant gathering, currently faced with hunger due to failed crops and scorched fields due to prolonged dry spells, a harsh experience attributed to climate change.

“Some people are preparing to initiate girls in the brutal initiation mid this month, but the community has decided that it is not useful, since women are not getting anything out of it. The district council has decided to establish an ordinance banning it," says Nelson Chelimo, chairman of Kapchorwa district.

His community has been sensitized against the practice for several years. Educated young women in Kapchorwa have shunned it, but their numbers are fewer compared to the largely illiterate population caught in the brutal tradition. The district council's ordinance will now be submitted to parliament so that it can become law, and subject to enforcement by the national police force.

It is widely believed among the many tribes that a woman who married without first being circumcised would be stricken for life with various illnesses. However, those who have transformed from traditional to modern lifestyle have found those beliefs to be false.

Last year, the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution that called Female Genital Mutilation a violation of the rights of women and saying that it constituted "irreparable, irreversible abuse" that increases the risk of HIV transmission, as well as maternal and infant mortality.

According to UN estimates, between 100 million to 140 million women worldwide have undergone the horrifying practice, which has attracted Euro 1million fund from the European Union to empower women on the African continent make inroads toward achieving Millennium Development Goal number three. The 1 million (about $1.26 million) Netherlands government funded initiative will mainly draw lessons from conflict and post conflict hotspots in Africa where women bear the brunt of gender based violence (GBV) which includes sexual assault, rape and female genital mutilation.

“These lessons are meant to empower the continent’s women to confront the horrors of GBV and demand justice across Africa,” Netherland’s ambassador to Uganda, Jeroen Verheul says.

Temples of War, Pan African women network Akina Mama wa Africa (AMWA) and the Netherlands government have picked two case studies from Sierra Leone and DR Congo where women’ s bodies have served as temples of war in past and present conflict.

“We need to see prevention of gender based violence prioritized through constitutional reforms and enabling laws,” says Ms. Solome Nakaweesi Kimbugwe, AMWA’s Executive Director.

The project will apply the lessons learned from the two countries to other conflict and post conflict areas, including Northern Uganda, where women have suffered acts of violence during the brutal 22-year rebellion at the hands of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and government army. As the way forward, activists should demand legal reforms to earn justice for the victims.

By United Nations benchmarks, Uganda is on course to achieve MDG No.3 for promotion of gender equality and women empowerment, but a lot more ground has to be covered to stop GBV. The Female Genital Mutilation Bill, for instance is currently before Parliament. Other daunting legislations that relate to gender such as the Domestic Relations Bill, Domestic Violence Bill and the Sexual Offences Bill are still stuck at cabinet level.

“Uganda in the 1990s was a best practice case in terms of gender progress and policy formulation, but has somewhat stagnated on the legislation front. Because of this, experiences of Congo and especially Sierra Leone are a good rejoinder that should jolt Kampala out of stagnation,” says Christine Butegwa, Director, AMWA.

Like Uganda, the Sierra Leone story is disturbing. On the one hand, the country is conflict ridden but its culture also serves up another vice on the GBV menu female genital mutilation which happens in some of Uganda’s communities.

On top of this suffering comes raging men during the war, who rape teenagers, women and even children. The Rape and Crisis Centre in Freetown, according to Sierra Leonean activist Amie Kandeh herself a victim of female genital mutilation records testimonies of women who have turned up to tell horrifying stories, when soldiers and rebels alike forced sons to gang rape their own mothers while their siblings looked on.

“This is not drama, but reality. And you talk of compensation, how much can you compensate? At the Rape and Crisis Centre, the youngest rape victim is two months old,” says Ms. Kandeh.

In several African countries, women’s sexuality and sexual reproductive rights are controlled by men under the cause of culture, norms, morality and even religion. But in scenarios where armed conflict has intervened in countries like Burundi, Ivory Coast, Congo, Somalia, Sudan’s Darfur, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, the plight of women has worsened, with crude violations of women’s sexual reproductive rights running high, leading to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, prolonged tears, urinary fistula, faecal fistula and chronic sexually transmitted diseases.

Often, victims of such acts are rejected and stigmatized by their own families and made to suffer post traumatic stress disorders, depression and suicidal attempts. Few post conflict peace building initiatives in many countries address the women’s sexual reproductive health rights.

By Judith Auma
Judith Auma writes for The African Executive

African woman defies death threats fighting circumcision

July 17, 2009

Hamburg - Her work has brought her death threats. Rugiatu Turay, 32, helps girls avoid the cruel and internationally condemned ritual of female genital mutilation (FGM).

Speaking about the millennia-old practice, which affects 8,000 girls worldwide daily, is taboo in Turay's homeland Sierra Leone, as it is in many other African countries.

But she refused to remain silent. In 2003, Turay founded the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM), a women's rights group that fights FGM.

"It's my heart's desire to spare girls the brutal genital mutilation that I myself experienced," she said.

Turay was 12 years old when she fell victim to female circumcision, a procedure in which the clitoris and labia are removed with knives and razor blades. It happened 10 days after the death of her mother, when Turay was taken to a secluded place along with her sisters and female cousins.

"We were glad. We didn't know what awaited us. We thought it was an outing," she emotionally recalled in the Hamburg office of the children's rights organization Plan International, which backs AIM.

"It was horrible," she said. "My sister lay screaming on the ground. I was blindfolded. I resisted with all my strength because my mother had told me that no one should touch me there."

Turay lost so much blood that she was unable to walk for seven days. She was not taken to hospital and nearly died.

"I fled to my father and showed him my wounds," she said. Her father could not help her, however.

"It's almost impossible to talk about it. They want you to be afraid. But I have no fear," Turay said. By "they" she meant the men of Poro, a powerful secret society in Sierra Leone. The Poro men tried to intimidate Turay by laying supposedly magic objects in front of her house.

But she went to the police and asked the Poro chief, "What would you do if someone wants to kill your child?"

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there are 150 million girls and women worldwide whose genitals have been mutilated. Most of them are in African and Arab countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Somalia and Sierra Leone.

Meant to prepare girls for marriage and motherhood, female circumcision is often associated with Islam. Neither the Koran nor the Bible mention it, however. But girls who have not been circumcised are considered "unclean."

The circumcisers, who are female, are highly respected and well paid. AIM does not try to publicly shame them, but to persuade them that circumcisions are a bad idea.

"We educate them about the consequences of genital mutilation and suggest alternative sources of income," Turay said, adding that she had converted the Poro chief by showing him a video of FGM.

Through Plan International, AIM also offers school seminars informing children of their human rights. Though an increasing number of girls are aware of the dreadful consequences of FGM, many are unable to overcome the power of the authorities and the circumcisers, as well as pressure from their families, and so have no choice but to flee.

"Since 2005, we've had a least three girls a year who ran away from genital mutilation," Turay said. They found shelter at an AIM centre in the African nation of Guinea, and two of the girls live in Turay's house in Lunsar, her home village.

"With the help of donations, we want to establish a women's refuge there, too," she said.

Genital Mutilation: Women fight Africa's taboo

They broke the silence from tribal elders and politicians – but paid a high personal price for trying to protect millions of young girls from the knife By Katrina Manson in Sierra Leone Friday, 27 February 2009 The female journalist was snatched by members of a secret society, forcibly stripped and made to parade naked through the streets. It might sound like an atrocity from the time when Sierra Leone was ripped apart by a bloody civil war, but in fact the public humiliation was exacted in the diamond-rich eastern town of Kenema just this month. The woman's alleged crime was reporting on female genital mutilation. While the attack was condemned by media watchdogs as "disgraceful behaviour worthy of a bygone age", one woman who was not surprised was Rugiatu Turay. When she was 12 Ms Turay was stolen away by family members and underwent what some politely refer to as "circumcision". She calls it "torture". For the past six years, she has been waging a war against the practice, which many in Sierra Leone, including senior politicians, see as an initiation rite. Her organisation, the Amazonian Initiative Movement, tries to protect young girls from the knife. "I picked the name because I am trying to talk about strong, powerful women," she says Ms Turay, who works with her 20-strong staff in and around the northern town of Lunsar. So far, she has persuaded about 400 practitioners of female genital mutiliation (FGM), who are often called soweis, to lay down their blades and stop their role in the traditional bondo ceremony. "Silence means consent. But if you say the truth people listen ... We go to the schools, mosques, everywhere." As reward for her tenacious efforts, she has received death threats and been attacked by juju men, sometimes armed with magic, sometimes with machetes. She describes a time when more than a hundred people paraded a symbolic corpse outside her home to suggest her own death: "They came right in front of me sharpening their cutlasses." But so many times has she failed to die, that locals now think she is immune. "Now they believe I have special powers. They do nothing to me." Ms Turay was mutilated at her aunt's house where she was staying with her three sisters and her cousin. "We didn't even know that we were going to be initiated," she says. "They called me to get water and then outside they just grabbed me." She was blindfolded, stripped, and laid on the ground. Heavy women sat on her arms, her chest, her legs. Her mouth was stuffed with a rag. Her clitoris was cut off with a crude knife. Despite profuse bleeding she was forced to walk, was beaten and had hot pepper water poured into her eyes. "My mother had always told me never to let anyone touch me there. I was scared and I tried to fight them off. Nobody talked to me but there was all this clapping, singing, shouting," recalls Ms Turay. "When I tried to walk on the seventh day I could not walk. All they could say is 'Today you have become a woman'." Ms Turay is among the estimated 94 per cent of girls who undergo FGM in Sierra Leone. The practice – which forms part of a ceremony of initiation rites overseen by women-only secret societies such as bondo and sande – can cause severe bleeding, infection, cysts and sometimes death, but is largely ignored. Reasons for the process vary, but many people cite tradition and culture, saying it is essential preparation for marriage and womanhood; binds communities to each other and to their ancestors; and restricts women's sexual behaviour. Last year, UN agencies came out strongly against the practice, labelling it "painful and traumatic", a violation of human rights and demanding it be abandoned within a generation. "It has no health benefits and harms girls and women in many ways," said the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO). "The practice causes severe pain and has several immediate and long-term health consequences, including difficulties in childbirth." Yet many international aid organisations are too scared to do anything about it in public for fear of being labelled cultural imperialists. A recent Sierra Leone child rights bill dropped any mention of FGM at the last minute, and politicians – including President Ernest Bai Koroma – baulk at the mention of the subject. A decade ago, a female politician who later became the minister for social welfare said: "We will sew the mouths up of those preaching against bondo." More recently, politicians are rumoured to have sponsored mass cutting ceremonies, which can be relatively costly affairs in one of the world's poorest countries, in an effort to secure votes in elections. "Secret societies have become intertwined with modern political life in Sierra Leone and retain considerable power and influence," wrote the anthropologist Dr Richard Fanthorpe in a paper commissioned by the UN. When I asked President Koroma – whose country receives more aid per person from Britain than any other donor recipient – about his position on the practice, it was the first time I saw the usually affable leader lost for words. Unable to reach for his usually ubiquitous wide toothy smile, he meandered awkwardly through an answer: "Let people in civil society deal with this issue." That leaves the fight against FGM, which the WHO says has been conducted on 92 million African girls – and rising by up to three million a year – to the odd brave soul such as Ms Turay. The 26-year-old is among a number of anti-FGM campaigners slowly achieving results. In her effort to keep some safe from cutting, Ms Turay has even adopted 14 children from Sierra Leone and Guinea. Girls under 15 regularly undergo the cutting and for the newly initiated, it remains a frightening process shrouded in secrecy. "You should not tell anybody about circumcision or else your stomach will swell and you'll die," one young girl who didn't know her age told me quietly in her local Temne language. Ms Turay hopes her struggle will help break such taboos of talking about the cutting in public, although it may also spur more reactionary moves, such as this month's punishment meted out to the journalist in Kenema. And it is no easy task persuading the practitioners to abandon what they see as a rite of passage. Girls as young as five are trained to become circumcisers and it is an income-generator in a poverty-stricken country, still struggling to shrug off the legacy of the 1991-2002 civil war. "I didn't like it when it happened to me and I worry about the pain of the girl, but I do it because they pay me, and because we met our ancestors doing it," says practitioner Marion Kanu, 35, whose two children are also practitioners. Others have seen the error of their ways. "I regret it now," says another sowei who has vowed to stop. But it is not always easy to hang up the knife. One woman practitioner who said she would stop the cutting was kidnapped by members of the bundu society. Both her and her baby were beaten and taken to the bush for three days without food or water; the mother was raped. Her life was saved only by Ms Turay's intervention.

Statement by African Women Are Free to Choose (AWA-FC), Washington DC, USA

(From The Patriotic Vanguard)

February 20, 2009

Statement by African Women Are Free to Choose (AWA-FC), Washington DC, USA.

It is with great concern that we, members of the newly formed African Women Are Free to Choose movement, regard recent situations in Sierra Leone, immediately stemming from the press release issued on Feb 6th by the U.S. Embassy in Freetown.

We are concerned about recent accusations of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) made against an important and valued female institution in Sierra Leone, the Bondo sodality of women. Though we do not condone the use of violence or intimidation we are also deeply affected by the inflammatory impact of language such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). We declare categorically that this language is offensive, demeaning and an assault against our identities as women, our prerogatives to uphold our cultural definitions of womanhood including determining for ourselves what bodily integrity means to us African women from ethnic groups that practice female and male initiation as parallel and mutually constitutive processes in our societies.

We declare that thus far the representation of female circumcision (FC) - its social and ideological meaning in terms of gender and female sexuality and impact, if any, on reproductive health and psychosexual wellbeing has been over the last thirty years dominated by a small but vocal number of African women that make up the Inter-African Committee (IAC) with the enormous backing, if not outright instigation of powerful western feminist organizations and media personalities. Through aggressive use of the media to portray African women as passive and powerless victims of barbaric, patriarchal African societies, their efforts have succeeded in influencing and tainting the objectivity of such institutions as WHO and UNICEF, among other international organizations that have taken the lead role in promulgating anti-FGM policies and legislation worldwide.

Through political pressure from first world countries on whose aid they continue to depend as well as internal political expediency, several African countries have introduced anti-FGM legislation over against the full knowledge, participation and desires of the majority of affected women. This will not happen in Sierra Leone.

Thus far, the negative medical or health claims about various forms of FC have been disputed as grossly exaggerated by several independent medical researchers and practitioners. The claims that various forms of FC reduce or eliminate sexual desire and feeling in women have also been disproven by affected women themselves, the researchers who relentlessly question them and medical doctors who examine and treat them. We can provide ample references for anyone who is interested in any of this work.

That FC was designed by men to control women’s sexuality is a western feminist myth constructed in a disturbing dismissal of African gender models of male and female complementarity and of our own creativity, power and agency as adult women in the social world. The assertion that FC violates the rights of children falters in the face of WHO’s promotion of routine neonatal male circumcision (MC) to protect against HIV infection in Southern African. Incidentally, circumcised African women also have some of the lowest rates of HIV infection among women in the world, so why the double standard?

We remind the world that all what is being said today about FC - barbaric, dangerous, reduces sexual pleasure, parochial - has also been said about male circumcision by its detractors, usually and conveniently, by those who are themselves uncircumcised. Just as racist remarks were made and aggressive legislation to criminalize practitioners (sometimes with the threat of capital punishment) were introduced by host countries or cultural outsiders to abolish MC with the support of some prominent male Jewish insiders, so too such negative actions are taken against practitioners of FC with the zealous support of some cultural insiders. Just as the bulk of Jewish men resisted and openly defied these edicts so too do the bulk of circumcised African women daily and openly resist global eradication policies and continue to define and celebrate their heritage. Just as MC has not ended and is even now seen as desirable with health and aesthetic benefits, so too FC has not ended and is even desired and being repackaged as vaginal cosmetic surgeries or “designer vaginas” by affluent segments of the very population of western women that today condemn us as “barbaric”.

We recognize the legitimacy of claims of the minority of circumcised African women who view their experiences in a negative light. Like the minority of circumcised men who have organized anti-circumcision campaigns, they emphasize their experiences of unnecessary pain and suffering and see their genital surgeries as an attack on their gender identities. We have no problem with these women, just as their male counterparts, organizing to seek change or even referring to their experiences and their own bodies as mutilated. However, these women, like their male counterparts, must take their case to the bulk of others who are circumcised and convince them of their worldview through peaceful, democratic and lawful means. If, where and whenever they fail to convince the majority, the minority must respect the choices and freedom of the bulk of practitioners to positively define their own experiences and bodies. This is a key cornerstone of any modern liberal, democratic and plural society. While we respect and do not support the coercion of the minority to uphold a tradition they find offensive, we certainly will not allow the minority to impose their will and worldview on the majority of women who are circumcised and their prerogatives as parents to make this decision for their children, both male and female. The minority of uncircumcised women in Sierra Leone, as elsewhere in Africa, must have the freedom to remain uncircumcised if they so wish (and many do request circumcision); and, for those already circumcised who wish to abandon the practice, we advocate for and stand with the Government in protecting their rights to not circumcise their own children. This is true, non-coercive abandonment.

As a newly formed association, Free to Choose will not accept attempts to delegitimize the positive experiences of most circumcised women and any attempts to deny African women, circumcised or not, our rights to self-determination. Further, most of us are not fooled by the substandard research evidence - anecdotal and those purporting to be objective science - to manipulate and coerce circumcised women into submission, that is, to give up a practice that is culturally meaningful to many African women. We question the appeal to a common sisterhood by our western feminist sisters who pretend they do not have a stake in seeing their own uncircumcised bodies as “normal”, “healthy”, and “whole” and therefore morally superior to our own supposedly “mutilated” African bodies.

Therefore, we call on restraint and respect on all sides. To the Soweis and Sokos of Bondo - you are mighty and need no other justification than that which we your daughters have just given you. No amount of western education and modernization can replace our ancestral rites and rights so we are with you. In that small place in Kenema you are showing the world that ours is not just about training women to be good wives and mothers (another myth constructed by our feminist critics and oft repeated from our own culturally ignorant western educated mouths) but that ours is a militant African feminist indigenous institution equipped with a hierarchy and election process that was set in place long before the very western feminist organizations that ridicule us now came into existence and won the right for their own women to vote in their male constructed and dominated social worlds. While our Bondo women warriors fought and died together with our Poro brothers in revolts against colonial injustices, where were our western feminist sisters who are today so interested in the intactness of our genitalia?

As we honor and carry on that militancy in our communal female spirit, let us seek ways to (re)educate our critics and to correct their misunderstandings and biases about female sexuality in particular and gender in general. We have ample intellectual, scientific and religiously grounded resources to do this. Let us also stand strong and united as our female ancestors have in the past against any attempts to allow the vilification of our own practices while our critics overlook or turn a blind eye to their own. Let us be united as African women to stand against any attempt to deny us our cultural rites and rights as adults equal to any other adult in the world whatever their religion, race, and country of origin. My sisters, mothers and grandmothers in Kenema, continue your peaceful protests, you are an exemplar to other so-called oppressed third world women who are portrayed as so passive and ignorant that they need western women to interpret their experiences and speak for them on the world scene. We stand with you in your resistance.

To SLAJ, while we support you in condemning any form of violence against journalists or any other civilians in Sierra Leone for that matter, we too are watching you. We will not allow the media in Sierra Leone to be hijacked and used to spread inflammatory language and messages in a country in which the bulk of women are members and strongly support Bondo. You do not need to use the term FGM, unless you state explicitly that the M refers to Modification and not Mutilation. You can use the term excision, which describes the procedure that can be associated with most women in the country. You can contact us and we will be happy to advise on culturally sensitive approaches. We can also provide you with lists of independent (i.e. non-activist) researchers and experts who are prepared to address any issues you have concerning FC as it pertains to health, human rights, cultural meanings and so on. We support the free flow of information so that women can be informed on both sides.

What we will not support and will expose is deliberate provocation by any member of the press of an international crisis to create a perception of Bondo as archaic, barbaric and unlawfully persecuting that very symbol of modernity, the innocent journalist in a truth-seeking mission to correct social injustice. If someone is itching to receive an international journalist of the year award and a free trip to the UN in New York, it will not be at the expense of our culture and our bodies.

To the U.S. Embassy, we recognize that you are following U.S. Policy. As Americans (some of us born, others naturalized) and permanent residents, we are proud of our great nation and commend your office. We are particularly thrilled that you represent the President of the United States, a man born to an African immigrant. Many of us are African immigrants or first generation African-Americans. We are also especially proud that the US President is of Kenyan descent, given the role of Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya and nationalist hero, who championed the practice of female circumcision among his ethnic group, the Kikuyu, in his stance against colonialism during the struggle for Kenyan independence from British rule. President Obama’s father was a Luo, as we are told, an ethnic group that does not practice either male or female circumcision whose members are sometimes persecuted by neighboring groups because of this as well as forcefully circumcised. Thus, this is perhaps an opportune moment for the US to lead the world in pausing for a moment to rethink the female (and male) circumcision controversy in global health policy: the homogenizing as well as hegemonic (and hypocritical) claims of western feminism over this issue; the cultural meanings FC and MC hold for the majority of practitioners and their right to self-determination; and importantly the internal ethnic politics of economically deprived African countries whose leaders often manipulate the female circumcision question, whether promoting or banning it, for political and economic expediency.

In the spirit of true diplomacy, we advise that the use of the term FGM is a slight to the very women you claim to support and speak for. Women in Sierra Leone do not form a homogenous group - most of us come from ethnic groups that practice female and male initiation, a section of the minority Krio who are descended from freed slaves do not. Most women support the continuation of FC and some are against it. We expect the US Ambassador, to show respect for all women of Sierra Leone and not use derogatory language that diminishes the majority of women over a minority. This would never happen in the United States where the public use of racist language can be viewed as an incitement to violence, and can be punishable by federal law. Prior to the civil rights movement, it was commonplace and uncontroversial for whites to refer to blacks by the n-word (and many blacks to refer to themselves as such, as some do today); the moral inferiority of blacks was not really in question. However, there is no doubt that the use of the n-word then (as it still does today) caused resentment and anger among many blacks. Similarly, the term FGM causes resentment and anger among circumcised women, even though the common perception of the day is that we are mutilated and hence morally inferior to so-called intact women.

In our local languages we too have vulgar terms for uncircumcised women, which is the marked category in our cultures. Even when used by circumcised women to refer to other circumcised women in a derogatory way it is an automatic provocation that spurs violence. In your proclamation against FGM you have given, albeit unwittingly, license to a minority group to use insulting language against the majority of women. If Bondo women were to respond by using their own vulgarities to refer to uncircumcised women there would be all out war among women in Sierra Leone eventually and inevitably - unknowingly or unintentionally triggered by the US Embassy. And, all Sierra Leoneans are tired of senseless war. Thus, we ask that the US Embassy and other western diplomats show due restraint and respect to all Sierra Leonean women, even as you, your NGOs and International Organizations advocate against our cultural practice.

To the Inter-African Committee (IAC) that has declared February 6 Zero-Tolerance to FGM Day, we do not know you, you have not made yourselves known to us, we have not elected you, you do not represent us and your organization has no legitimacy in the eyes of the masses of grassroots women across the sub-Sahara African belt. If the world does not know this, it will soon be made evident. Though you insult (and support the imprisonment of) our traditional female leaders as financially benefiting from the modest sums of money and basic goods they receive from families of initiates, you do not tell us the amounts of your own salaries, consultancy fees and per diems in the burgeoning anti-FGM global industry in which some African sisters (and brothers) are now fighting to outdo one another for international recognition. It is your leaders and your members (how many, 10, 20, 50 women?) who will need to start looking for alternate sources of income other than the horrific lies and images you have packaged and sold a world too ready to believe the worst of Africans. We will continue to celebrate and uphold our initiation practices and we will challenge whatever global international process that has given you official status to decide what happens to our bodies over against our knowledge and what name others should call us over against our will.

Finally, to our main judges, mostly otherwise liberal-minded uncircumcised women: please understand that the global feminist movement to eradicate female circumcision in Africa (and anywhere else) masks what is in fact a global movement to standardize and universalize the white European female body as the cultural, psychic and moral ideal. To the extent that many African and other third word women do not practice female circumcision within their own ethnic groups then these women’s bodies conform to the “healthy”, “normal”, “beautiful” and “desirable” European prototype for all women. We ask that you not ignore the blatant racism which underlies the zealousness of western feminists in abolishing FC but not MC, in marking African women’s bodies and sexuality as mutilated, while remaining quiet on other forms of women’s bodily and even similar genital surgeries. Their agenda is not really about our bodies, circumcised or not; it is about justifying theirs and thus resolving the uncomfortable dissonance that the existence and support of female excision by subversive African women poses for western feminist imperialism.

We ask that you consider what is happening to the minds of some of our immigrant daughters in western countries as they watch the sensationalist media spectacles of young circumcised African women who, in order to break into the modeling industry, accept invitations to publicly condemn their bodies as mutilated (as a couple of their infamous, albeit tragic predecessors did previously in bestselling tell-all books) on talk shows, reality TV, as well as magazine spreads where they exhibit their barely clothed bodies for the gaze and wonderment of the western world. We ask how different is the circulation and consumption of these images from that of South African “Hottentot” women paraded around Victorian circles; their photos eliciting feelings of sexual horror in a perturbing voyeurism engaged in by those (both European men and their wives) with the power to gaze as well as to define the “other”.

In that Victorian era, when white European women were defined as sexually repressed they projected their fears (in complicity with their husbands) onto African women who were viewed as sexually licentious and immoral. Today, to the extent that the descendants of these women view themselves as sexually liberated (calling attention to their external clitoris as the phallic symbol of theirs and so all women’s liberation and autonomy) they project their fears of past repression onto circumcised African women, who given their deliberate excision of the external clitoris, are conveniently marked as sexually repressed and passive. As circumcised women are already defined by white women and in comparison with them as mutilated, no one has bothered to ask what it is that circumcision symbolizes to African women. This would require a great leap of faith that Africans, not the least African women, have constructed, defined and continue to reproduce a meaningful social world, worthy of existence and defense, outside of dominant European socio-cultural and religious contexts and hence, moral control.

Thus, though we see that most of you are sincerely convinced of your concern about the health, sexuality and bodies of African women and girls, we suggest you remove first the plank in your own eyes: What are your own fears and concerns about your own bodies and how do these relate to your individual experiences of male oppression or violence in your lives as well as your societies’ historical experiences of patriarchy? What myths have your own cultures evolved about women’s sexuality including the relatively recent (re)discovery of the external clitoris as the supposed ultimate site of women’s pleasure and orgasm? How do you condone the routine circumcision of your sons, if this is the case in your own cultures, and react emotively to the idea of the circumcision of girls? Do you see no issue with the increasing popularity of Beverly Hills 90210 genital cosmetic surgeries among well to-do western women, including clitoral and labia reductions, vaginal rejuvenation or tightening and even restoration of the hymen?

And, to our formidable opponents, the radical few western imperial feminists who arrogantly say that multiculturalism is bad for women (and really mean only Euroamerican culture is good for all women), we suggest that in your self-righteous determination to draw the line at FC you reveal more about your hidden racism and xenophobia than you allow the world and yourselves to see. Whatever the case, my sisters, while we will not interfere with your rights to promulgate your steadfast beliefs in the superiority of western gender norms, cultural and aesthetic practices and pretend as if they are the same for women the world over, we will not allow you to deny us what is truly our own: our African cultural rites and our rights to uphold them. Your global power and financial resources, your attempts to divide and conquer us by handpicking, promoting and rewarding those of us who will do your dirty work on the ground in Africa, in the parliamentary and congressional halls of western countries and in secretive, exclusive UN meetings as well as your manipulation of the global media will never match our communal African feminist spirit of resistance, stretching from one end of the Sahara to the other, from the beginning of human history to this day.

We cannot end without acknowledging the sincere efforts of those circumcised and uncircumcised women, insiders and outsiders, activists, scholars, medical researchers and so on who believe in the equality of individuals and cultures and have tempered their individual beliefs with a commitment to evidence-based interventions and research that do not prejudge or stigmatize individuals, entire groups and cultures. We will continue to work with the growing number of such individuals in advocating for rigorous design, implementation, analysis and dissemination of scientific studies that look at the reproductive and sexual health outcomes of both circumcised and uncircumcised women in a wide range of geographic contexts and SES levels. We will continue to respect the rights of NGOs and other entities to try and convince women to abandon these cultural practices as long as their methods are culturally sensitive and respectful.

We will, however, also insist on the rights of African women to continue their traditions if they so choose and will challenge and protest any unjust laws and policies that unfairly discriminate against them. We will step up to organize and sensitize affected girls and women to the full range of their human rights and not just the ones anti-FGM activists choose to share with them. Our new movement includes both circumcised and uncircumcised African women, those who are for and some who are against the continuation of FC as a personal and family decision. We believe that it is in such open and honest woman to woman dialogue and collaboration that we can come up with policies and interventions that protect the rights of minorities to dissent and the rights of the majority to rule as well as the dignity of the individual to choose what happens to her (or his) own body. This is not a subversive idea or a radical one, it is the principle of pro-choice and respect for privacy applied to African women; it is the same principle that supports a woman’s right to abortion, though critics view this as the killing (read: worse than mutilating) of an innocent child; it is the same principle that supports the right of a sixteen year old to opt for genital and bodily piercings, though others may see this as mutilating and repulsive; it is the same principle that invokes sympathy for gender confused individuals and supports their right to radical surgery to change their genitalia and gender.

As for those girls too young to give consent, we must accord to their parents the same rights we accord to the parents of boys in neonatal male circumcision and not discriminate on the basis of gender, religion, ethnicity or country of origin. We will work with willing stakeholders on all sides to determine appropriate ages of consent in varying socio-cultural contexts depending on how majority is determined for decision-making in other important life-crises or stages of development. None of this will be easy and western feminist opposition seems daunting, but from today we, African feminists, educated and illiterate, professionals and rural rice farmers, Christian, Muslim and followers of traditional religion, take the important step to begin speaking up for ourselves in local, national and international contexts in support of our global rights.

The AWA-FC is announcing a press-conference on March 6th 2009, in the Washington DC Metropolitan area, specific time and location to be announced shortly.

Statement by African Women Are Free to Choose (AWA-FC), Washington DC, USA

EDITORIAL : Ban Bondo in Sierra Leone now

Ya Mbalu , the local Digba or Sowei , is a very highly respected woman in the traditional Sierra Leonean society. She hardly goes anywhere to work for her living. Ya Mbalu, for all you know, may not go to work, but her pot is always boiling .Infact, her pot boils most in the society because the townsfolk larvish her with all she desires. In her yard are tethered the fattest cows, goats and sheep and she is even very strong also  on the monetary side .Women in the villages and towns rever her perhaps more than the Chief and she elicits tremendous clout, awe and respect wherever she goes. She is the local folk heroine .

But for all the benefits, priviledges , respect and awe she commands, Ya Mbalu is by no means a model citizen or inhabitant. She has caused a lot to distress to humanity .The woes that Ya Mbalu has inflicted could better be explained by Sorie, the local palm wine tapper. Seated in his small palm wine stall where townsfolk come to  enjoy the gourds of frothing , potent palm wine he sells, Sorie  could hardly help whispering to his buddies :  " Sengeh  put my daughter out again today . He says she was cold again  last night. He says that  even a corpse would have had some life. I don't know what to do any more .It's been like this for so long.I hear he is looking for another wife . Sisi Tenneh,  his aunt,  is looking for another woman for him. "  The other  men sympathized with Sorie, but some giggled lecherously  in excitement,  though Sorie's in -law's  problem is not uncommon to them. They know what their local palm wine man is talking about but it can only be whispered among men in secret.They dare not complain about it publicly.

The other day, an angry Fatu had her husband ,  the local barber,  Abu,  fined Le. 1 million for venting his frustration  about  her failure "to meet him halfway"  every night.  He attributed  it to "This your women's Society ". Fatu reported Abu to the much-feared Digba,  Ya Mbalu , who in turn  reported his "Offensive remark " to Chief Pa. Komrabai, who issued Abu a summons to appear in his local court. In court , Abu was given no chance to explain himself. He was chastised by the old chief, fined and warned that the Bondo women will be allowed to put a curse on him in future and have him develop "Bossin " if he ever "puts his mouth in their society business again".

In other parts of the town, even  local midwives are cussing under their breaths or complaining to their confidantes when they are sure that the walls have no ears. Their complaints are  different, but still very serious . To some, the women who come to them for delivery almost always seem to have problems during and after child birth. This is a problem they claim is rare in Freetown where their services are often procured. "Could it be true after all ?", Wuyata asked her collegue ,  Mankallay : "Is what the White Man's Book saying about our society true after all? Why do we have these problems only here upcountry or when we deliver native women ? Has it happened to you when you deliver non-native women?" Mankallay shook her head and bowed her face.

Mankallay herself underwent the same complications when she had Amadu, her son. In fact, if the midwife had not been good, both Abu and herself would not have come from the birth bed alive. Wuyata herself has lots of complaints about infections and unexplained pain she has every now and again. Both women, secretly to each other, have conceded that the problems they have could be traced back to the day Ya Mbalu performed female circumcision on them . Both women whisper to each other that they were suffering from the after-effects of their ordeal at Ya Mbalu's hands. However they dare not voice out their conclusions publicly to the hearing of other women. Apart from the torture and punishment that would be their lot, both women would be stigmatized in society forever for having the audacity to talk against a custom that "their great great grandmothers, great grandmothers and grandmothers underwent without complaint."

VERDICT : Sierra Leone faces a clear choice. She must either be prepared to be a nation of disabled and secretly-suffering women or put the Ya Mbalus out of business. The argument that the Bondo society must be banned has been raging in our country for too long and it is high time for the authorities to take action.

There is no reason for our country to continue to practice a procedure that has been proven to be harmful to our female population. Let the  pro-Bondo fanatics advance whatever arguments they want. They can no longer convince anybody that Bondo has a useful function in our society.

It has been proved by scientific studies that there is no correlation between  sexual promiscuity and female circumcision. Sex is purely a function of the human mind and the abuse of it is has no connection with the presence of a certain organ in females. God gave human beings the ability to control and suppress their sexual urges. In fact, it is an insult to the wise, good and omniscient God for human beings to seek to alter his creation. Every human part has a specific and important function and it is not within the rights of any human being to decree that a certain human organ is evil and should be excised. It is wrong. Neither the Bible nor the Quoran has an edict calling for female circumcision. The Bible decreed only male circumcision as a covenant between man and God.  

Women who take offence whenever calls are made for Bondo to be banned should realize that female circumcision, apart from all the harm it creates , is also a violation of the human rights of women. As a anti-Bondo activist, Aminata Toure,  rightly said in an article produced in another column in this newspaper, Female genital mutilation is a violation of the bodies of women . It has to be banned . We cannot afford to continue violating the human rights of women. Bondo has outlived its usefulness in our society, if indeed it was ever useful.

We also call for extensive education of women about the evils of female circumcision. Ignorance is an underlying reason for the fanatical spirit women demonstrate for the Bondo society. With thorogh education about the harm FGM is causing women, it would be easier to convince the digbas and soweis and adherents of the Bondo Society to cease the practice in Sierra Leone, as has happened in some other African countries.

The government must protect women and children yet unborn from this horror of genital mutilation . 

And it must be done expeditiously.

Women , after all, are the hands that rock the nation and we cannot afford to be a nation of disabled and suffering women. 

Sierra Leone: 'Soweis' Abduct Female Journalists

Sierra Leone: 'Soweis' Abduct Female Journalists

Mohamed Massaquoi

9 February 2009

Freetown — Two female journalists based in Kenema have been released after they were arrested by 'soweis' (initiators of the bondo FGM ceremonies).

Manjia Balama-Samba and Henrietta Youn Kpaka were Saturday held hostage by a group of women who apparently considered their reports, on the controversial female genital mutilation, as a blatant show of disrespect for tradition.

Chief initiator Haja Massah Kaisamba said the incident happened in the absence of the paramount chief who could have intervened before the journalists could be taken to the bush.

"I have told the women that the reporters were never against FGM per se. I have asked for a right to reply and I intend to use that opportunity clarify the issues and call on those women not to take any such actions without due consultation," she said.

Manjia Balama-Samba, a reporter for the United Nations radio and Henrietta Youn Kpaka of the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS) Kenema, were held hostage on Saturday morning at 'Kpanguwiama' (bondo bush) along Sahara Street.

The journalists had conducted several interviews as part of the media's collaboration with the inter-African committee on traditional practices (IAC) to observe February 6, 2009 as the 5th anniversary of the international day on zero tolerance to female genital mutilation (FGM).

IAC said FGM has been recognized as violence against women and girls and coupled with other medical, social, psycho-sexual and economic consequences.

"The practice should not be allowed to continue under the guise of tradition or religion."

In an interview with Concord Times, one of the hostages, Kpaka explained from where she was being held that there was a radio programme on FGM and the Manjia being a reporter in the region was threatened on the phone, first by some unknown persons.

She said certain individuals later called on her to turn herself over to the 'sowies' or she would be attacked and her house would be burnt down.

"When I heard that Manjia was being held hostage, I decided to come and talk to her about the incident. The women did not allow me to talk to her. She was stripped of her clothes and surrounded by senior bondo women. All of them were furious about the incident, some saying the she had openly degraded their society."

Head of the independent media commission Bernadette Cole and the president of the Sierra Leone association of journalists Umaru Fofana have both condemned the abduction.

In a press release the journalist association said We condemn in the strongest of terms these illegal arrests and detention in a Bondo Bush of the journalists and reiterate our appeal to the public that formal and civilized channels exist for seeking redress which must be respected."

Sierra Leone: 'Soweis' Abduct Female Journalists

S/Leone anti-FGM activists sensitise communities on dangers of the practice

APA---Freetown [Sierra Leone] Gender activists have been commemorating the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation [FGM] by storming communities and urging parents and initiators, to stop the practice, APA learns here Friday. S/Leone anti-FGM activists sensitise communities on dangers of the practice http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?page=show_article_eng&id_article=88097