LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Booked Solid |
a review by Rebecca James |
Do They Hear You When You Cry, by Fauziya Kassindja Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! FGM: Female Genital Mutilation. For women raised in many countries, it is a gruesome fact of life. Traditionally, FGM is a tactic employed by male-dominated religious cultures as a means to further shame and control their female members. While not always officially endorsed by the government in these countries, FGM is frequently overlooked as a domestic issue and even encouraged to be performed. It is desirable to have a "cut" wife (or wives) because these women are calmer, better behaved. They have less sexual drive and can be pushed into submission more easily than their untouched counterparts. The women that refuse to undergo the ritual in a traditional culture risk being ostracized, beaten, or even killed. The United Nations officially recognized FGM as a human rights violation early on, but had managed little in the way of educating people to prevent the practice. Canada was one of the first countries to consider gender-related persecution legitimate grounds for granting asylum and included FGM as a method of persecution. Britain and other countries eventually followed suit, but the United States remained relatively ignorant of the practice until the mid-1990s. They routinely deported female refugees seeking protection from gender-related crimes like FGM. That is, they did until Fauziya Kassindja. Kassindja was raised in a wealthy West African family in Togo. Her mother and father were liberal members of the Muslim religion; they had enough money and clout to challenge some of their tribe's traditional practices such as polygamy and kakia, otherwise known as FGM. Kassindja and her sisters were well educated, her older sisters had all married men of their choosingmen who shared their father's resistance to the cutting ritual. In 1993, when Kassindja was just 17, everything changed. Unmarried and living at a boarding school in Ghana, Kassindja received word that her beloved father was dead. By Muslim law, responsibility for Kassindja and her younger brother passed directly to her father's brother, a man her father had quarreled with for years over their conflicting beliefs. This man banished Kassindja's mother from the family home and destroyed her father's business. Within a year, he arranged for Kassindja to be married to an older man with three wivesa man that wanted her to be cut. Kassindja, young, scared, and alone, was not allowed to protest the marriage, nor could she see her mother. It was through a sister that dared to defy the men of the tribe that Kassindja's mother reached her daughter. They had to help her escape. "There was nothing there. Nothing. She had no genitals. Just smooth flesh with a long scar running vertically between her legs where her genitals should have been. And a hole. A gaping hole..." Female Genital Mutilation can be performed in several different ways. The amount of flesh removed varies from tribe to tribe, but each version of the cutting ritual is dangerous. Girls may be exposed to serious health risks including severe blood loss, shock, pain, infection, disfigurement, psychological trauma or even death. Kassindja's own aunt died from her cutting. Using bits of broken glass, razor blades or knives, the clitoris, labia minora and labia majora are removed and the edges of the remaining skin stitched together. A small hole is left near the anus for the passage of urine, blood and (painful) intercourse. The girls are then bound from hips to knees for forty days so the wound can heal. The ritual may be performed while the girls are infants, children or teenagers. They are held down. They are terrified. Kassindja's mother found a way to slip her daughter money the day of her wedding. Her sister helped Kassindja reach the airport; after that, it was up to Kassindja, who had never flown before, to escape the country and enter Germany under the guise of a student traveler. From there, Kassindja flew to the United States and landed in Newark, New Jersey. It was here that her nightmare truly began. As Kassindja entered the customs area, she approached an officer and asked for asylum. She was immediately detained by immigration officials. For the next sixteen months, Kassindja was transferred from prison to prison and forced, along with other immigrants, to live with murderers, drug users and psychologically disturbed women. The refugees were frequently housed in maximum-security cell blocks. They were denied access to adequate health care and nutrition. Kassindja endured several long stays in complete segregation; once for almost a month simply because of a bad reaction to a TB test. They endured riots, ridicule, beatings and complete filth while waiting for an inefficient and downright cruel system to get around to hearing their requests for asylum. Unlike inmates, the refugees were also frequently denied adequate access to their lawyers. The women were moved without warning and "lost" within the prison system for days at a time. Even when they gave up and cried to go home, they were denied action. Kassindja was trapped. In her memoir Do They Hear You When You Cry, Kassindja and her lawyer explain in haunting detail the injustices faced by refugees everyday. Asylum seekers are criminalized and treated like animals after escaping equally brutal conditions in their own countries. Like Kassindja, they become physically ill in prison and lose the strength to fight a system they cannot begin to understand. Kassindja's personal journey is an excellent account of both the circumstances bringing refugees to the United States and the legal path they must travel to stay. She mixes factual information about FGM and other asylum statistics with her own experiences. Kassindja describes the changes made in laws regarding gender-related persecution and how they affected her case. Her triumph in 1996 represents a window of opportunity for women suffering for oppression both in the States and across the world. As you read, it will become your triumph as well. Rebecca James lives, reads and writes in Rehoboth Beach and is currently practicing massage to support these habits. She may be reached for home visits at 226-9685 or at Spa by the Sea on Baltimore Avenue, 227-8640. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 10, July 28, 2000. |