'Cutters' join fight against genital mutilation

[dArKeR]

By Mark Lacey
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , Nairobi, Kenya

Isnino Shuriye still remembers the pride she felt years ago when she leaned over each of her three daughters, knife in hand, and sliced into their genitals.

Each time, as the blood started to flow, she quickly dropped the knife and picked up a needle and thread. Quickly, expertly, she sewed her daughters' vaginas almost shut.

"I was full of pride," she recalled recently.

"I felt like I was doing the right thing in the eyes of God. I was preparing them for marriage by sealing their vaginas," she said.

Now she feels like a butcher, a sinner, a mother who harmed her own flesh and blood, not to mention the thousands of other girls she says she circumcised in the last quarter-century as part of a traditional rite still common in Africa.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/06/13/2003174895