Free Republic

A survey by the Kurdistan Minstiry of Health shows that 41 percent of women have gone under the practise of female genuital mutilation (FGM). The survey was carried out in July this year. The results of the survey were announced during a campaign to raise awareness on violence against women in Kurdistan earlier this week. Part of the campaign has focused on FGM. The survey by the government shows that mothers are the main party responsible for forcing their daughters experience the painful ritual and then grandmothers and fathers.

Young girls born in Europe to immigrant families from Africa are being subjected to ritual genital mutilation, and authorities are doing little to discourage it, a leading women’s rights activist warned. Somalia-born supermodel and best-selling author Waris Dirie, who has campaigned to end the disfiguring practice she suffered at age five in her homeland, said yesterday that she estimates one in every three African families living in Europe is secretly carrying out the ritual on their daughters. No official figures exist. The procedure – illegal in most European countries – is especially prevalent in Germany and the Netherlands, as well...

Russia's media expressed has shock over a remark by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-EU summit in which he urged a Western reporter asking about the war in Chechnya to come to Moscow and "get circumcised". Mr Putin's comments, made at a closing press conference of the Russia-EU summit in Brussels, were played by TVS television station and republished by several major Moscow newspapers and Internet sites. The Kommersant business daily reports Mr Putin was asked a Danish reporter why Russia was using mine warfare in the separatist North Caucasus republic and exterminating Chechen civilians. Reports say Mr...