RDC recruits locals in FGM fight

Amudat, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  Amudat Resident District Commissioner, Robert Adyama has started recruiting reformed Pokot warriors and women to provide intelligence information on the outlawed Female Genital Mutilation-FGM, which is believed to be taking place in the wilderness. 

Speaking to URN on Thursday, Adyama said they have started identifying three boys and girls for each village to provide police information on the banned practice. “These youth will help us to know the corridors where these surgeons hide and circumcise women and young girls because they are also natives of this region,” he said. 

He says FGM has persisted in the district despite being outlawed by the government in 2010.   Anybody found guilty of practising FGM is liable to imprisonment for 10 years. And when a women or girl dies during the practice, the culprit gets a life sentence.  The tough measures haven’t deterred the Pokot from conducting FGM, which involves the partial or complete removal of the clitoris. 

Because of the stringent measures by the government, the surgeons have changed the month of cutting girls from March and June to December. The prospective FGM candidates cross to Kenya under the guise of going for Christmas celebrations. Adyama says police and sister agencies will patrol areas, where the practice often takes place. 

“This time we are ready to deal with these surgeons who have paid deaf hears to continue cutting women even after the government ban the practice,” he said. John Lotir, a resident of Karita has welcomed the move to recruit locals to monitor the practice and appealed for their protection. 

“This practice has been benefiting many people especially the elders but now when they get to know that so and so reports to police. He or she can even be killed so there is a need to put a mechanism where the monitors are protected,” he said. 

Betty Chelain, one of the FGM survivors appealed to the government to increase more attention in the fight against FGM. “Much as our elders claim it’s their culture but let me tell you this is one of the worst cultures. It’s actually tormenting because it involves a lot of pain,” She said. 

Chelain, who was married off to a 70-year-old man at a tender age of 15 years after being subjected to FGM, says that she got wasted. “I didn’t stay with the man who married me for long just within three years he passed on living me to be a widow and this because my parents were after dowry,” he said.  

Jane Chelangat, a pupil of Kalas girl’s primary school told URN that the punishment for FGM surgeons should be death by firing squad. “These surgeons are killers, they cut girls using one knife on eight girls and you can’t know who has HIV/Aids among them,” she said. 

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URN