i packed a lot of books with me and i wasreading harry potter; harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban and then you know my mumcame to talk to me and she was like oh, you know its going to be today and i was like,ok, right then its not just something and you just do itand it gets better, you give paracetamol and it gets better. it does not get better. andi know me, it will stay with me 'til the day
3 US women share horror of female genital mutilation, i day an estimated 500 british girls will be thevictims of genital mutilation ths summer. it will happen during their scholl holidays. the only thing they know is we go on holidaycos that's what they say to them.
we all go on holiday we;re going to go visityour uncle or your auntie, you haven't met them, and we're going their for holiday fora couple of weeks and we're coming back. mum took me and she just said that its timeto get circumcised, and i was like, oh, ok then, and then she said we're going on holiday,and i was like we're going on holiday as well, alright, what this holiday will mean, for girls asyoung as five will be a journey abroad during which their clitoris will be cut out, eitherentirely or partially. this is also happening in the uk summer is the most dangerous time for children.
the six week summer break, is the longestof the year. any child who is going away to have fgm, ifthey have it in this country or abroad and they will need of recovery of between fourand six weeks because the legs are bound together to allow the wound to heal (commentary startsbefore she has finished speaking.) jamelia lives in layton, east london. at theend of year 7, during the summer holidays she was taken to mogadishu by her mother tobe cut. she was twelve even to the day when it happened, even inthe morning when i was told it was going to happen today, even then i didn't have anyobjections to it. i was almost kind of, well, i was i was submissive, i, its something ithought that you had to do- i wanted to do
it. the house is usually empty, we'd rentedlike a big mansion, it was usually empty but when i came back into the room there wereloads of women there. i was like where did these people come from, but they was there,i later found out, to hold me down. miriam is 32. she was cut in somalia, my sister was 6, i was 7 when i was circumcised,so my sister was 6. we wasn't circumcised in a hospital, we were circumcised in ourhome, in my house, and it was the lady that who does everybody, in that area. you cancry, but it was kind of like a shameful thing if you actually cried , or if show that yourscared, so you kind of have to this tough, 7 year old child.so then i just lay down,
and i remember looking up at the ceiling andjust staring at the fan. the women who cut me, i remember she had one grey eye, she was very old, she had one grey eye andi remember, before it began, i was still lying there, she was negotiating with mum with themoney and my mum had to pay her extra for using a new razor. and i remember, the bloodeverywhere and actually one of the maids, we had these ethiopian maids, one of the maidsactually saw her pick up the bit of flesh they cut out and, because she was moppingup the blood, as there was blood everywhere. so when the circumcision happened they tieyour legs together so you don't take big steps, because if you did take big steps, you know,the stitches they would come out so they want
you to walk really really slowly. second,you have to go to the toilet, and pass urine and that was hell.three weeks after the operation jameilia came home begin her second year at comprehensiveschool in stratford i felt strangely a lot older, a lot lot olderand it was odd because no one says to you this is a secret, keep your mouth shut, butthat's the message you get loud and clear so i didn't really discuss it with anyone.not even with the girls from my country who i'd probably assumed had the same done. doyou really talk to anyone? kind of like personal pain don't tell anyone else about it, what'sthe point? there were six other girls in her form fromsomalia that year.
after having their clitoris cut off the girlsare sewn up tightly leaving just one tiny hole for urine and blood. an ancient rite of passage... they are cut open again on their wedding day when miriam was cut at the age of seven herwomb was accidentally sealed. when my periods started at the age of twelve,i never got a period, i didn't even know i was having a period, and that time is wheni got sick, i got really sick and nobody knew what was wrong with me. it was when i wentinto theatre and i had an operation, doctors realised it was not a cyst it was my periodthat had started but because there was nowhere
to come out it was staying in my body. every day it makes me mad becausei wanna have a baby and i can't. i felt very disconnected with my body becausewhen your a young girl through puberty excited about all the little things, like you knowwhen your body starts to develop. after that i didn't really get excited about anything.((cries)) these parents don't do this in any way theythink they are abusing their children. they don't do it out of hate or harm, for thesecommunities, they have lost everything. they've lost their profession, they've lost theirlivelihood the only thing they can sometimes hold onto is their tradition,
it happened to a lot of generations back soits not like they not to do it on purposely to me its just they, they didn't have no clueat that its not a religious thing to do. it was just a bad cultural thing that has beenpicked up. what isn't centuries old is the relativelynew phenomenon of children being cut in the uk. the nhs have confirmed that cutters are beingflown into britain to cut girls in batches. jackie mathers is charge of safeguarding childrenin bristol, she became concerned about fgm after teachers approached her saying theirgirls were affected we had some intelligence that with the creditcrunch that cutters may be being paid to come
over cos it would be cheaper to come and dochildren over here as a large number than it would be to have families taking flightsto other countries. one parent did turn round and say 'we have parties that was her description,and we would have a large number at a time. what a large number is is difficult to identifybut looking at numbers of sort of twenty probably. though women have been killed for daring tospeak out against the cutting of girls just last months these women in bristol wereprepared to march through the streest to protect their daughters. it was the first time ever in the uk thatwomen were prepared to show their faces and challenge this underground practice.
they know they can get away with it and theycan and they are. the marches may have begun but for miriamleft childess after her circumsicion. in france they have taken a much tougher line,this this cutter was sent to prison for eight years and dozens of parents were also prosecuted. miriam, left childless after she was cut,says there is a need for direct intervention at airportsbut i wish we had a gynaecologist at the airport. because that gynaecologist could prove thatgirl has just been circumcised because if they know there is a doctor in the airportand when you go he will know and do a check
up and when you come back he is going to doa check up, they will not do it
some people think that's too harshwell again, what is too harsh, to ruin a little girls life, take all her organs, cut themoff? so she's just like a shell, walking? is that harsh? is that alright?
