Sunday 8 August 2010

Summer holidays: Peak time for female genital mutilation of UK schoolgirls

According to this Guardian report and video (warning: shocking images), up to 2000 British schoolgirls will be taken abroad to undergo female genital mutilation this summer. Summer holidays are the peak time as the girls have to have their legs bound together for several weeks afterwards.

Like any 12-year-old, Jamelia was excited at the prospect of a plane journey and a long summer holiday in the sun. An avid reader, she had filled her suitcases with books and was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when her mother came for her. "She said, 'You know it's going to be today?' I didn't know exactly what it would entail but I knew something was going to be cut. I was made to believe it was genuinely part of our religion."
Perhaps it's insensitive of me to criticise this practice, and it's about time I became a convert to ethical anti-universalism.

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