Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 18 – The barbaric
practice of female genital mutilation only rarely has attracted media and
judicial attention in the republics of the eastern North Caucasus (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/08/women-in-north-caucasus-often-beaten.html)
because there, a code of silence has been cast over the subject.
Ordinary people do not speak of it,
often because they are unaware of the problem since it appears to most commonly
appear among married women and thus is viewed as such an intimate family matter
that even scholars shy away from talking about such issues and because there is
no Russian law specifically banning the practice.
Last month, however, this silence
was broken because of a case involving a nine-year-old Chechen girl who was
subjected to this debilitating surgery in Ingushetia, sparking demands from
Russian officials that actions be taken to punish her father who asked for the
surgery and Ingush doctors who carried it out.
(On this tragic and unusual case,
see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/female-mutilation-in-ingushetia-not.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/russian-politicians-feminists-demand.html
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/abuses-in-ingushetia-call-attention-to.html).
Now, as regional journalist Aida
Gadzhiyeva shows, this code of silence is hopefully ending, the result of large
and active Internet communities that have focused attention on the practice
even when those immediately involved prefer not to talk about it even if they
object (etokavkaz.ru/sobytie/zapretnaya-tema-pochemu-v-ingushetii-ne-khotyat-govorit-o-zhenskom-obrezanii).
She notes that the first criminal
case about this in Ingushetia occurred “almost by accident” and only months
after the operation occurred because even the mother of the girl who was
subject to this cruel operation under social pressure backed down and said she
would prefer not to bring one.
On June 22, 2019, a nine-year-old
Chechen girl in the nominal care of her father was subject to genital mutilation
in a Magas hospital. Her mother subsequently found out and complained. But despite her complaints which triggered an
investigation by Ingush officials, the case quieted down after the mother under
pressure dropped her objections.
Fortunately, a distant relative of
the girl’s mother was too horrified and angry to do so; and she, identified by
Gadzhiyeva only as Seda, continued to complain not just directly to officials
but via Internet communities, like the 6,000-member “Overheard.Feminism.Caucasus”
one, which were not prepared to be silent.
Seda posted that the mother of the girl
who had been disfigured acknowledged that she herself had been subject to genital
mutilation before her marriage. His future husband’s family had insisted on
that. If the same thing had happened
this time around, she apparently would not have said anything at all, but it
was inflicted on a very young girl.
“In this,” Seda continued, “consists
the chief misfortune of the majority of crimes in the Caucasus: No one speaks about
them. They are considered normal, and no one sees in them a violation of human
rights.” She said that after she had
complained, she was sharply criticized by those around her but felt she could
not fail to expose this crime.
According to Gadzhiyeva, “the
question is so much under a taboo that even in scholarly works, it is passed by
in silence. Chechen ethnographer Zulay Zhasbulatova said she knew such things
happened in the past but that she chooses not to write about “such intimate
things” in her own work now.
But if family members and scholars
are intimidated by social pressure into remaining silent, Internet communities
are providing a way for other to speak. And they are now talking about this
horror, bringing it to the attention of others, and allowing ever more people
to violate the previous taboos.
According to Gadzhiyeva, the center
of the problem now is in Daghestan. In Ingushetia, it is confined to some rural
areas, and in Chechnya, it has become rare. One young woman from Daghestan
posted online that in her village, all young women, even very young ones, are
subject to this operation.
Saida Sirazhdinova, the president of
the Center for Research on Global and Regional Problems, says that there are
many such villages in Daghestan and that the best estimates – there are no
official figures – suggest that 1240 Daghestani girls and women as young as
three are now subject to genital mutilation.
Regional journalists, like Svetlana
Anokhina, have tried to attract attention to and official action against such
actions, but they have faced serious opposition not only from many in these
traditional societies but from some leaders of the Muslim community. Fortunately, the Internet is making it harder
for these forces to continue to hide this horrific practice.
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