Women call for stiffer penalties for practitioners
 
2006-07-21 09:20:24
By Christine Chisha

	A former FGM performer Sabina Wambura (L) and her sister, Rachael Wambura from Tarime District in Mara Region, answer reporters` questions during the first day of a workshop organised by the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA).

Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) has called on African governments to enact stringent laws that provide for punitive punishment for practitioners of female genital mutilation (FGM).

Speaking at a workshop organised by TAMWA on the role of the media in combating FGM, the activists said yesterday that it was unfair for governments to punish only the guardians and parents who take children for circumcision.

’’FGM will only come to an end if both the parents, guardians and ngariba (circumcisers) are punished by law,’’ the activists said in their memorandum to African governments.

They said FGM deprived women of their conjugal rights, which they said are their entitlement and a natural right.
The lobbyists called for women’s unity in combating the abhorrent age-old practice.

Rachael Wambura, a former FGM performer, said ethnic groups that still practice FGM should be discouraged through community education programmes to enable them realise to that they engaged in blatant violation of women’s rights.

She said most of the circumcisers do not understand why they subject women to the cut as it a tradition carried over from their forefathers.

’’The practice is evil. I and my young sisters used to be ngaribas but we have stopped because we realised it was evil. We are now born again Christians,’’ Wambura said.
And an anti-FGM crusader Kate Kendel from Denmark said it requires lot of courage for a woman to come out in the open and admit they are circumcised.

She said that in her motherland, Sierra Leone, FGM is a tradition that stretches more than 500 years back.
She said she underwent the cut at the age of 16, an experience she said had traumatised her all her life.

’’It takes a lot of courage to tell people that you don’t have anything between your legs. When I came out in the open it took away a burden that I had been carrying for many years,’’ Kendel said.

• SOURCE: Guardian