Posted on 10/04/2002 11:53:48 AM PDT by Tancred
The American authorities appear to be backing away from a threat not to allow into the United States Somali refugees who have genitally mutilated their daughters.
A group of about 12,000 Somali Bantus are currently waiting in a refugee camp in northern Kenya and have been given the right to emigrate en masse to the US.
But earlier this week the American embassy in Nairobi confirmed that some of those refugees had been rushing to circumcise their young daughters, having learned that the practice is illegal in the US.
An embassy spokesman said those involved would be investigated and the families probably barred from emigrating.
But now it seems doubts are surfacing.
Rite of passage
The American State Department is trying to tread carefully over what is becoming a very emotive issue.
It has put out a brief statement saying that it condemns the "abhorrent" practice of female genital mutilation and that it is seriously considering the next step.
Privately, aid workers have been critical of the American threat, saying it is "unworkable" and pointing out that the rush to circumcise has more or less stopped anyway following a series of recent publicity campaigns.
The United Nations Refugee Agency has gone further.
A spokesman, Emmanuel Nyabei, said there was nothing unique about what the Bantu Somalis were doing to their daughters.
The same thing has happened in the past, he said, with other groups waiting to emigrate.
The circumcisions, carried out without anaesthetic, are illegal in Kenya and the United States.
But the practice, an ancient rite of passage, is widespread in Somalia.
The 12,000 Bantus are members of an ethnic minority, the descendants of slaves who are persecuted in their country.
The first families are due to fly out to the US within a few months.
N one so savage that he would be willing 1) to mutilate his own daugher, and 2) to hurry it up so that he could get it done before emigrating should be permitted even to dream about coming to America.
I don't want to hear any more "ancient rite of passage" BS. This is cruelty of a degree that confounds my thesaurus. It's perpetrated to subjugate women, and for no other reason.
I don't know how much more of this sort of barbarity we can absorb before it gets the upper hand and begins to take us over.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Say hello to the future of the US, a third world nation.
You are right. Who are we to be judging other cultures? We are using our intolerant Eurocentric morality to judge another culture and their customs.
We would not expect them to judge our culture and insist we mutilate our children, so why do we think is is OK to be judgemental and intolerant toward their cultural practices? If we really wish to embrace diversity we must embrace without being judgemental. Each and every culture is morally equilivant to every other culture. We must not place emphasis on our own cultural values over any other cultures values. Multiculturalism is being non-judgemental, our strength is in our diversity.
In fact, Charles Manson and his followers were really a sub-culture within the larger culture. As such, they should be celebrated as a diverse and beautiful building block toward a stronger, more tolerant more non-judgemental America.
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