Authorities arrested four girls and their parents in Pokot Central Sub County in Kenya after the children received female genital mutilation (FGM).
The girls told the media they chose to undergo the procedure due to peer pressure. The Standard reports:
“Our parents never forced us to undergo the rite. We escaped from our homes one week before we underwent the cut. We walked several kilometres to Dung’u Dung’u village, where we met the old woman, who performed the rite,” said one of the girls.
The girls said they paid Sh200 [$1.94] each to the woman before she offered the services.
“We offered casual labour on one of the farms in our village where we earned the money to pay the old woman who circumcised us,” they said.
The parents told the court they had nothing to do with their daughter’s female genital mutilation. However, the authorities “ordered they be remanded until October 14 as police continued their investigation.” One girl claimed she did not know that FGM is illegal in Kenya.
In July, MailOnline interviewed two cutters in Kenya. Anna-Moore Ndege is “half-blind” but began performing female genital mutilation 70 years ago.
“Girls are cut to ensure they remain faithful because the sexual organ is not there anymore,” she declared. “When you are cut you will not be a slut looking for men here and there like a prostitute. You are docile, waiting for your husband because after you are cut, sex is for having children not for anything else.”
Parents around the world, but mainly in Europe, bring their daughters back to Africa to be butchered.
“Circumcision is an important festival,” stated cutter Agnes Kerubo. “It’s a celebration like Christmas. It unites people. There is feasting and drinking and dancing.”
She continued: “When you are cut that’s when you can grow healthily into a woman because the bad blood is not there anymore. In the body there is good blood and bad blood. After a girl is cut the bad blood is gone.”
Police swarmed Scottish airports to protect females during the peak of “cutting season.” Female genital mutilation is illegal in Scotland, but it does not stop families from transporting their unsuspecting daughters to other countries. These family members “choose the summer holidays to give girls time to ‘heal’ before they return to school.”
In August, the Somalian government announced “its intentions to ban” female genital mutilation in the country. UNICEF discovered that 98 percent of the girls in Somalia underwent the mutilation.
“In the past when girls were subjected to FGM, it used to be something the society was proud of, but it’s no longer the same,” said Sahra Mohammed Ali Samatar, minister for women’s affairs. “People shy from being associated with FGM. Now, when parents want their daughters to undergo FGM, they opt for underground avenues rather than public. That’s a clear indicator that the number of cases has drastically reduced.”
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