By Charlotte Zalens(this article also appears in the present issue of the AWL paper Solidarity)
On Friday 11 August the Sun newspaper published an article by Labour MP Sarah Champion under the headline ″British Pakistani men ARE raping and exploiting white girls … and it’s time we faced up to it″.
The article is incredibly confused and naive (at one point Champion suggest that despite being the director of a children′s hospice until becoming an MP in 2012, she only heard the abbreviation CSE for Child Sexual Exploitation a few months after becoming an MP). Champion talks of British Pakistani men, but also references recent events in Newcastle where most of the men convicted were not Pakistani. She seems to conflate race, ethnicity, and religion throughout. Champion′s claim that ″Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls″ is crude, inaccurate, and wrong.
Champion has tried to distance herself from the article, saying that it was edited to take the nuance out of her comments. But her choice to publish such an article with the Sun, well known for dog-whistle racism often targeted at Muslims, where her article appeared alongside an editorial which called for MPs to tackle ″the Muslim Problem″, condemns her. Champion is the MP for Rotherham where large scale child sexual exploitation, involving an estimated 1,400 children between 1997 and 2014, was exposed in 2014. That case, unlike Newcastle, did involve British-Pakistani men.
In other respects the Rotherham case bears many similarities to that of Newcastle. There were multiple factors involved there: vulnerable young women, poverty, the use of drugs and alcohol, authorities disbelieving or in some cases blaming victims as well as, the patriarchal attitudes of some men, attitudes which are prevalent in many communities, in different forms, and which make women and girls “fair game” for sexual exploitation.
At the time of the Jay Report into CSE in Rotherham we wrote: ″What happened in Rotherham is happening in other areas of the country; although there will be particular local circumstances, there will be a wide range of abusers and victims. ”
The Jay Report cites the hesitancy of social workers and practitioners over reporting the ethnicity of abusers as Pakistani, for fear or being accused of racism. This is a problem. It points to a dishonest way of dealing with racism.
″For many years Labour-led Rotherham council has relied upon tokenistic ‘multicultural events’ and communicating almost exclusively with self-appointed ‘community leaders’, often religious ones rather than engaging and building strong links with communities.
″This does not deal with racism in an open way; wrongly presumes the opinions of Muslim communities can and should be communicated by ‘community leaders’, and disenfranchises others.″
Unfortunately Corbyn’s response to these events was to flatten out all these complex issues and pose the problem as one of child sexual abuse alone. Our responses must talk about the multiple factors involved in abuse. Anything else makes it possible for “community leaders” and others in positions of power to say “nothing to do with us”. That situation makes it very difficult for women’s groups and others in Muslim communities who are pushing hard for more discussion about attitudes to sex, sexuality and respect for women.
As we said in relation to Rotherham, it also endangers Muslim girls. ″… the council and social services ignored the possibility that abuse may be happening within the Pakistani community. An image was established of Pakistani men abusing white girls. In fact such abuse usually happens to those closest to the abuser. The under-reporting of abuse from minority ethnic victims is a problem.″
It appears some lessons have been learnt from the Jay Report; police did at least actively pursue gangs in Newcastle, but other lessons have not, and many vulnerable young women continue to suffer abuse.
Sarah Champion would not have been wrong to have raised the question of the likely connection between sexual abusers’ cultural (not racial, or even religious) backgrounds and their attitudes towards women and girls. Others have done this without making any concessions to racism. What she was – unforgivably – wrong to have done, was to have written about such a sensitive matter in the Sun, a rag with a long and well-known record of taking a (shall we say) cavalier attitude to racism.
Indeed, all this could well have been a set-up by the Sun. They wrote the headline and quite possibly the line which made it specific about “white girls”. Champion’s office had the Sun‘s final version of the article before it was published, and, of course, she could have objected to this but either didn’t bother checking it or (more likely) was flattered to be published and thought it would raise her profile.
Even so the outcry, at first, was not that great. It looked like Champion was going to survive it. According to today’s Guardian, “the Labour leader’s office appeared to back Champion until yesterday lunchtime, when positive emails from her office to the Sun in the aftermath of her article’s publication were highlighted by the newspaper.” By and large Corbyn supporters online had been quiet about the issue. Even the SWP were not really kicking off about it.
What did for Champion was Trevor Kavanagh’s shamelessly racist pro-Brexit article that quoted Champion approvingly. It used language that echoed Nazi stuff about the ‘Jewish Problem’, and thanked Champion (and Trevor Phillips) for “making it acceptable to say Muslims are a specific rather than a cultural problem.”
The article closed with a sinister rhetorical question:
One day soon, if Philip Hammond and Liam Fox are right, we will be back in charge of immigration.
What will we do about The Muslim Problem then?
Not surprisingly this caused outrage and the Corbyn team, quite rightly, wanted to respond but Sarah Champion’s article was the elephant in the room, inhibiting the Labour leadership from making an immediate, outspoken response.
All the evidence (including her own record as shadow equalities minister) suggests she’s an idiot rather than a racist. But that’s no excuse. She had to go.
Seventeen men and one woman have been found guilty of involvement in a sex grooming network in Newcastle upon Tyne that plied vulnerable women and girls with drink and drugs before assaulting them.
In a series of four trials at Newcastle crown court, juries found the men guilty of a catalogue of nearly 100 offences – including rape, human trafficking, conspiracy to incite prostitution and drug supply – between 2011 and 2014.
The men befriended more than 20 victims and invited them to “sessions” at properties, mostly in the west end of the city. The girls were lured by the offer of alcohol and drugs, in particular mephedrone (“Mkat”) and cannabis, and were expected to offer sexual services in return for the substances.
The victims, all females between 13 and 25, were targeted because they were vulnerable and because they were less likely to complain because of their circumstances, the prosecution argued. The court heard accounts of young women who were drugged before waking up to find themselves undressed, having been sexually assaulted.
The police investigation that led to the trials was called Operation Shelter.
Operation Shelter has clear similarities to grooming scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale, which featured gangs of British Asian men abusing white girls. The men in operation Shelter are from a wider range of backgrounds, including Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish.
Geographically wider, but ideologically just as narrow.
The jury was told that the men had no respect for their victims and that they chose them because they were “easy targets”. The court heard that in April 2014, Badrul Hussain – who was found guilty of providing premises for drug supply – was caught traveling on public transport without a ticket. The female ticket inspector claimed that he shouted at her: “All white women are only good for one thing. For men like me to fuck and use like trash. That’s all women like you are worth.”
That ideology. It’s quite widespread.
In a parliamentary report published in November 2014 into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, MPs said they had reached “the alarming conclusion” that Rotherham was not an outlier and that there was a widespread problem of organised child sexual exploitation in England.
A spokesperson for the child exploitation charity Pace said: “Sadly we know that child sexual exploitation has been widespread throughout the country and it can affect any child or family. It is good that the perpetrators have finally been brought to justice. There has been immense trauma inflicted on those young people and their families. There will be lessons to be learned.”
Coatesy’s thoughts and links to other comments, here
Human remains found at site of Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam
They were discovered in what appears to be some type of sewage container
Scientific analysis puts the age of death between 35 foetal weeks and 2 to 3 years
Radiocarbon dating confirms the remains are from the time the home was in operation – many are likely to be from the 1950s.
THE COMMISSION OF INVESTIGATION into Mother and Baby Homes has discovered a significant number of human remains in what appears to be a decommissioned sewage chamber in Tuam.
The Commission has completed two test excavations of the Galway site and today confirmed that “significant quantities of human remains have been discovered” in a structure which appears to be “related to the treatment/containment of sewerage and/or wastewater”.
The structure where the remains were found is long and divided into 20 chambers. The Commission is not yet clear if it was ever used for sewerage or wastewater.
There were remains found in at least 17 of the 20 chambers. A small number of the remains were recovered for testing. A scientific analysis has put the ages of the deceased at between 35 foetal weeks to two to three years old.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that they are from the time the Bon Secours home was in operation between 1925 and 1961. A number of the samples are likely to be from the 1950s.
A second structure discovered during excavations between November 2016 and February this year appeared to be a decommissioned septic tank which had been filled with rubble and debris and then covered with topsoil.
The excavation area has now been sealed off Source: Christina Finn/TheJournal.ie
In a statement, the Commission said it is “shocked by the discovery” and its investigation is continuing “into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way”.
State authorities have been asked to take responsibility for the appropriate treatment of the remains and the North Galway Coroner has been informed. He will determine if there is to be any garda involvement in further investigations.
Speaking today, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone said the “sad and disturbing news” confirms rumours about the possibility of a mass grave at the site.
“Today is about remembering and respecting the dignity of the children who lived their short lives in this Home. We will honour their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately,” she added.
Decisions have yet to be taken on whether more excavations will be required at other mother and baby home sites.
The Commission was established following a 2014 report in the Irish Mail on Sunday that 800 children died in the home and were interred in a mass grave.
Local historian Catherine Corless has spent years researching the home, even obtaining death certificates for each child who died there, in the hope of rectifying an injustice.
In a statement today, the Bon Secours order said:
“The Bon Secours sisters are fully committed to the work of the Commission regarding the mother and baby home in Tuam. On the closing of the Home in 1961 all the records for the Home were returned to Galway County Council who are the owners and occupiers of the lands of the Home. We can therefore make no comment on today’s announcement, other than to confirm our continued cooperation with and support for the work of the Commission in seeking the truth about the home.”
Call for identification
The Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) and Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) said that they were saddened by the news.
They said that Tuam “is not an isolated case” and reiterated their call for an expansion of the Commission’s Terms of Reference to include all institutions, agencies and individuals that were involved with Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children, and to include investigations of burial practices at all of these locations.
They said that they want the government to ensure that all children who died in Tuam,a nd all children and adults who died in institutional care or custody, are identified.
In addition, they urged an Garda Siochána to establish its own investigation, independent of the Commission of Investigation, into abuse, neglect and illegal separations of mothers and children in Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, maternity hospitals, and through adoption agencies and similar entities.
They added:
We reiterate our concerns that the Commission’s Terms of Reference are not comprehensive enough, and stress that Tuam is but one institution in an ad hoc and almost entirely unregulated, State-funded system which had responsibility for the care of unmarried mothers and their children. Today’s disturbing statement from the Commission underscores that the State failed in its ‘duty of care’ towards these children and their mothers.
In the context of these revelations, and in the public interest, we also reiterate our call on Minister Zappone to publish the Commission’s second interim report without delay.
“We get hung up on this child abuse stuff, to the point where we’re heavily policing even relationships between consenting adults,” he said on a podcast called The Drunken Peasants in January 2016. Later, in the same conversation, he said that relationships “between younger boys and older men… can be hugely positive experiences.”
On an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast in July of the same year, Yiannopoulos made similar comments and also hinted that he has personally seen minors being sexually abused at a party and not reported it.
Yiannopoulos, for his part, has vehemently denied the allegations, saying that his comments were taken out of context and that he was being humorous. Yiannopoulos apologized during a press conference today saying that he regrets the comments, but that “as a victim of child abuse” the concept of him being a supporter of pedophilia is “absurd.” He went on to say that this was a conspiracy by the media to bring him down.
“Let’s be clear about what’s happening here,” said Yiannopoulos. “This is a cynical media witch hunt from people who do not care about children; they care about destroying me and my career and, by extension, my allies. They know that although I made some outrageous statements, I’ve never actually done anything wrong.”
“They held this story back. They held this footage back—footage that has been out there in the wild for over a year because they don’t care about victims. They don’t care about children; they only care about bringing me down. They will fail.”
Oddly enough, some of the more well-known players in the alt-right have come out against Yiannopoulos. Richard Spencer and Tim Treadstone (Baked Alaska), the latter of whom claims to be Yiannopoulos’s former manager, both shit on their former British king.
“The guy is totally done,” said Spencer on Twitter. “No sane person will defend him.”
However, it seems, even if Richard Spencer (a self-avowed white supremacist) won’t defend Yiannopoulos, the pizzagaters will.
Mike Cernovich during his online call-in show. Photo via screenshot
Mike Cernovich, best known as that pizzagate guy, dedicated his online radio show to defending Yiannopoulos last night. His main argument is that Yiannopoulos was joking about the comments, but he also has some rather strong thoughts on how the video came to be. Toward the end of his show, Cernovich tail-spins into a theory that this is all a systematic takedown by the “deep state”—influential but unknown members of the military or government agencies (CIA, FBI)—because “citizen journalists” were onto their pedophilia rings. Look, it’s not that easy to summarize something that is crystallized stupidity brought to life so here it is in full:
One third of the deep state are pedophiles, to get at that high level that they get at they have all kind of initiation rituals that a lot of people that wouldn’t believe are possible but it’s how they control you,” Cernovich said.
“What they do, if you want to be at the highest level—the highest power level—they make the new members molest children and record it. That accomplishes two things, one it gives them blackmail material on everybody for the rest of their lives but, even bigger, they know that if you harm a child, then you will do anything for them.
“That’s why they became really nervous when citizen journalists began investigating pedophile rings in DC, they got shaken up. The fake news media freaked out and now they want to tar everybody that they possibly can to try and distract from their true crimes, that’s what’s really going on here, 100 percent what’s going on here.
The theory that this is a deep-state psy-op has taken hold in many of the circles of the alt-right. Jack Posobiec, another prominent alt-right social media figure, tweeted that a source told him $250,000 was spent on opposition research on Yiannopoulos, where “they” hired PIs and video editors—former independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin is somehow involved as well. Lauren Southern, a 21-year-old Canadian media personality for the northern equivalent of Breitbart, also tweeted out that it was a hit job but later deleted her tweets.
Many, many blog posts have been written supporting this idea that Yiannopoulos is the victim of a smear job conducted by the mainstream media. However, these videos were out publicly on YouTube for quite some time, which would mean that these “deep-state operatives” must have a hell of a budget to be able to go back in time and force Yiannopoulos to make those comments publicly on the podcasts.
That said, there is significant online chatter worrying about further takedowns of members of Yiannopoulos’s brethren. Cernovich later tweeted that “Deep State is going after everyone with a large social media following” to which Paul Joseph Watson, of conspiracy theory and Infowars fame, tweeted “can confirm.”
Alex Jones ranting on camera. Photo via screenshot
Which brings us to Infowars founder (and apparently semi-regular Trump advisor), Alex Jones, who posted a doozy of a video entitled “Milo Is A Victim of Sexual Abuse, Does Not Promote Pedophilia” last night. The video is mostly him yelling in the dark about Yiannopoulos; yet it is still, somehow, the most sane defense of the bunch.
In the rambly clip, Jones calls Yiannopoulos a “beta gay guy” and seems to suggest that he’s gay because of abuse and has Stockholm syndrome. He calls the stories about Yiannopoulos a “witch hunt” and goes on a tirade against people who support trans rights. In the video, he suggests that journalists should be going after the big pedophile rings in Hollywood and DC instead of Yiannopoulos.
“On a scale of one to ten—zero being a really good person with your kids and a good life where you’re standing up for what’s right. On the compendium, on this whole spectrum, most of us are a one or something,” said Jones. “Then you got a Sandusky or these type of people that are nines or tens.
“This is like a three or four, so if we’re going to fry Milo, we better go ahead and fry everybody else who is involved in this.”
Jones concludes that this is “absolutely the Republican Party trying to roll up the grassroots support of the nationalist and populist movement that is taking place” and then compared Yiannopoulos to PewDiePie.
The whole situation seems to have taken place in the Upside Down. For several years now, the alt-righters have never seen a pedophile conspiracy they couldn’t sink their teeth into. At one point, Cernovich repeatedly targeted Vic Berger as a pedophile and sicced his merry band of trolls on him.
So it’s interesting to watch these people, who see pedophiles around every corner, and, like Yiannopoulos, have weaponized pedophilia accusations, scrambling to explain away Yiannopoulos’s own comments.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when the call is coming from inside the house.
LOUISE RAW writes on the lessons to be learnt from the feminist and anti-extremist campaigner’s new book, The Battle for British Islam. This article first appeared in the Morning Star and is republished with Louise’s permission:
SARA Khan is as fascinating a figure as she is polarising. A fiercely intelligent woman, she is glamorous and charismatic but also an “ordinary” overworked thirty-something Mum of two who organises meetings around the school run. Debrett’s last year listed her as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain.
Her work defending women and opposing extremism has — as is depressingly the way of things these days — attracted as much abuse as it has accolades.
You don’t, I hope, need me to tell you that being a woman with a public opinion, always a dangerous business, has become more so with the advent of social media.
Those people who might once have shouted “Bitch!” at the telly and left it at that now can and often do go much further.
Khan is a particular lightning rod, as a Muslim who opposes Islamism — by which she means the politicisation of Islam, which she believes to be directly antipathetic to the religion’s tenets — as well as Islamophobia, and will work with the government on both.
If that wasn’t enough, she is also a feminist who is unafraid to call out abuses against women in her religion and anyone else’s. Cue the sound of a thousand internet trolls rushing to their keyboards, steam pouring from their ears.
Khan has had to involve police in threats against her, and to consider her security arrangements.
What is particularly frustrating and pertinent to Star readers is that she’s been attacked by the left as much as the right, and by other feminists.
Khan talks little about the impact of her work on her life, and complains even less. She is careful not to centre herself, but the suffering of her Muslim sisters, in interviews.
This made certain lines in the introduction of her new book, The Battle for British Islam, stand out for me all the more.
Khan co-founded Inspire, the anti-Islamist charity with a particular focus on women, and for many years ran it as a kitchen table enterprise from her home. She assumed those on the left would be natural allies and supporters.
What she found instead was what she calls a “painful rejection.” She has been called a sell-out and an informant.
And within her own religion, she and her young children have been condemned as apostates. Despite remaining a Muslim, she’s been repeatedly called an Islamophobe.
I can corroborate the latter. Khan was a speaker at the 2014 Matchwomen’s Festival, and was angrily accused of “whipping up Islamaphobia” in the Q and A that followed.
Khan’s defence was spirited, though when I spoke to her afterwards she was unflustered, I suppose because she is so used to it.
Both as a feminist and the person who’d invited her to speak, I found it mortifying.
Criticism is valid, but the intemperate rejection of a Muslim woman’s viewpoint, and by white British women, seemed to me problematic.
I felt that those who intended to support Muslims by challenging her risked, ironically, sounding rather imperial: “The white people have decided you’re not a proper Muslim!” Disappointingly, it also derailed the discussion between Khan and the majority of audience members who were enthusiastic at the chance to hear from a Muslim woman who was willing to advise on so many issues, including how to engage with Muslim students without pandering to either Islamism or Islamophobia.
That kind of open dialogue is rare, for many reasons.
Even more discombobulatingly, I know and like both of Khan’s critics and respect their views on feminism in general.
The complexities of the experience opened my eyes to the political minefield Khan herself walks through every day of her campaigning life. She has attracted even more flak for her support for the notorious Prevent programme, established in the wake of 9/11 to tackle radicalisation in the UK.
Again, activists within the NUS and NUT have what seem like valid criticisms of the way the programme operates, both in its original and relaunched forms.
Khan argues in her book, however, that much of the criticism is ill-founded and based on media distortions, or deliberately orchestrated by Islamist groups.
In evidence she breaks down the infamous “terrorist house” incident, in which a schoolboy was supposedly referred to Prevent in December 2015 because he misspelt “terraced” in an essay describing his home and family life.
On the face of it, a great story illustrating laughably out-of-touch and heavy-handed jobsworths doing more harm than good. In fact, the story has been completely debunked — but this scarcely made the press. The boy in question was never referred to Prevent, but to Child Services, because he had written about the violence he experienced at home, including the piteous line: “I hate when my uncle beats me.”
Reading Khan’s book, it’s impossible to feel that determined response to those who would and do radicalise British children isn’t needed. She points out that in some areas, the majority of Prevent referrals are in fact over far-right extremism.
As ever, women are particularly vulnerable, bearing the brunt of anti-Muslim attacks, and targeted by Islamists online.
Khan’s book opens with the story of Muneera, a schoolgirl whose mother became ill when she was 13.
As a result, Muneera spent more time left to her own devices, and found online stories about Isis — she’d never previously heard of the organisation.
She tweeted an interest in them and was astonished by the response.
She was immediately “love-bombed” by waves of seemingly like-minded, supportive new friends, girls and boys her own age, who were either curious too, or eager to tell her more about the wonderful world she could inhabit if she joined Isis.
She later described the lies she was told in words that touchingly evoke the young girl that she was: it would be an “Islamic Disneyland,” where she could “live like a princess.”
One of her new friends was a 14-year-old boy later convicted of inciting others to commit terrorist acts. An extraordinary character apparently obsessed with extreme violence, his own classmates called him “the terrorist,” and didn’t think he was joking when he talked about cutting off their teachers’ heads.
The reality for girls who do join Isis is, of course, not paradise but a hell of brutality and misogyny.
Khan quotes one nauseating line from the handbook given to Isis fighters concerning the slave women and girls given to them to rape — literally bought and sold in slave auctions: “It is permitted to have intercourse with a female slave who hasn’t reached puberty.”
Had Muneera reached Isis, her passport would have been burned and she would have been married to a fighter. She didn’t get that far and today believes Channel, the arm of Prevent that works to help children like her before they have committed any offence, saved her.
She is angry about the way she was deceived and the time stolen from her childhood as she worked to get her life back on track.
The great value of Khan’s book is as a guide for the perplexed, taking the reader clearly and in readable fashion through the rise of Islamism and Salafism, and delineating the point at which she feels the left took a wrong term on Islamism.
She cites an influential 1994 pamphlet written by Chris Harman of the SWP urging Marxists to enter a form of scorpion dance with Islamism and not reject it outright as a form of fascism.
In spite of appearances and its hatred of the left, women’s rights and secularism, Islamism (argued Harman) was not akin to nazism but more like Argentinian Peronism.
We all saw this play out as a predictable disaster, not least because it was founded on the risky assumption that the leading partner in the “dance” would be the left and not Islamists: “[In] an almost patronising way, it was assumed that the poor, oppressed Muslims could be steered by degrees from Islamism to socialism,” says Khan.
It didn’t work, it was never going to work, and it should never have been tried given the complete betrayal of women necessary to stomach, let alone support, Islamist extremism.
Khan’s book is an eloquent and necessary exposition of the state we’re currently in, and a plea for understanding and unity in the fight against extremism — whether it’s the far-right or Islamism which is so against our interests, and should be so alien to socialism done properly. It is essential reading for feminists and lefties — who should, of course, always be one and the same.
Today (6th February) is International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM. To mark this important occasion, and to support the aims of anti-FGM campaigners throughout the world, Shiraz Socialist republishes the following:
Patriarchal oppression is the bedrock of female genital mutilation (FGM) and related harmful traditional practices.
The aim of this Statement is to gather support, from concerned citizens and from people directly working to abolish FGM, for research, dialogue and activism which derives from such an understanding. To that end we insist, for instance, that FGM be correctly named – as specifically ‘mutilation’ and not, in formal discourse, by any evasive or softening euphemism.
1. Female genital mutilation (FGM) in all its forms is cruelty and abuse. The United Nations has decreed it a fundamental violation of human rights [a].
2. FGM is practised in many parts of the world. The World Health Organisation estimates that some 140 million girls and women now alive have undergone this mutilation, with around 3 million more experiencing it every year [b].
140 million is however a very conservative figure and the total including e.g. Indonesia [c], the Middle East and diaspora destinations is likely to be much higher.
3. FGM, like other traditional practices which harm women and girls [d], is done from fear in many guises, at the instigation behind the scenes of powerful people who stand to benefit from it, for themselves [e].
4. The proper, and necessary, response to FGM is to treat it, wherever it occurs, as a very serious, sometimes deadly, crime. There is substantive evidence to suggest this approach, allied with appropriate education and support, is the most effective way of stopping FGM [f].
5. It is essential to acknowledge that African women leaders themselves, in joint statements [g], have decreed that FGM should in all formal discussion be called ‘mutilation’, and not by any other euphemistic term. It is deeply disrespectful of those brave women – and also extremely unhelpful – to ignore their judgement and advice.
6. We are concerned simply and solely with the essential protection from FGM, everywhere, of defenceless children, irrespective of whether the intended FGM operators are traditional practitioners or, in the modern contemporary sense, medically trained [h] .
(NB Necessarily, our concern further extends, in some communities, to the protection of women subject to involuntary FGM, e.g. when their marriages are arranged, after childbirth or after criminal abduction.)
7. We believe that all women and girls who have experienced FGM are entitled, as and if or when they wish, to skilled reconstructive or other surgery and /or additional medical and personal support, free of charge, as part of reparation for this crime.
8. There are many people with different skills and insights who can and should contribute to the work of abolishing / eliminating / eradicating FGM; each of us has a part to play.
It is however fundamentally important to recognise unreservedly, and to hear, the centrally critical contribution of women with direct experience of this harmful traditional practice who are seeking to eliminate FGM.
The instigators and authors of this Statement are listed here.
For information on the reasons and rationale for this Statement please see Statement Background. An account of how it came about can be found here.
We welcome support from everyone, women and men, black and white, academics, activists in the field, professional practitioners, political representatives, policy makers or simply concerned citizens of the world.
Please choose as many as you wish of the options which follow to let us know about your engagement with our Statement, and why it is important to you.
1. SUPPORT the Statement publicly, via the Change.org e-petition: FGM researchers and policy makers across the international community: Support the Feminist Statement on Female Genital Mutilation – and also forward the e-petition elsewhere if you can, please; and / or
2. JOIN THE DISCUSSION on this website, here about how to move the FGM agenda forward – feel free to also add your website / Twitter etc info for all to see, if you’d like to publicize them as well; everyone is invited to do this! and / or
Please note that
1. all posts on this website are moderated, and only posters who we believe give their real names will have their support published;
2. whilst we recognise and are also opposed to male genital harm, this Statement concerns specifically gender-related harm to women and girls. We will therefore publish only Comments which are directly on-topic (but if your website or Twitter handle also reflects male-gendered concerns, 🙂 that’s probably not a problem).
The names of some initial supporters of the Statement can be seen on the Statement Signatories Page.
Many thanks indeed for your support and engagement; we look forward to hearing from you!
Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective (Ashgate, 2015)
> Hilary Burrage has written the most definitive book ever on FGM. An invaluable tool to help eradicate it worldwide. A personal triumph. (The Guardian)
Dave K writes:
Readers may have seen interviews with Katy Morgan-Davies who escaped from the Brixton Maoist cult of “Comrade Bala”. Her story is horrifying and she is also very impressive in her own right. However though there isn’t much on this in the interview she obviously sees the links between the violence and abuse in the cult and its political worship of Stalinist leaders. It’s also heartening to learn that rather then rejecting politics (which would be entirely understandable) she has joined the Labour Party.
Watch this before your next theoretical discussion about whether or not Daesh are fascists, whether or not any form of military action should be taken against them … and whether or not we’re doing enough for refugees fleeing them:
The horrors exposed by the Jay report into child exploitation in Rotherham are so sickening, so angering, so distressing, that I’ve deliberately refrained from commenting. I’m simply not qualified to do so on an issue that seems at once so simple and yet so complex. What I am sure about is that those refuse to seriously address the racial aspect to this outrage are nearly as culpable as those who would use it to demonise Asian/ Muslim people and stir up racial hatred.
So, for now, I’ll simply recommend this piece by Samira Ahmed. I know quite a few of you will have already read this, as it was first published in yesterday’s Guardian. But it’s by far the best and most sensibly nuanced commentary on the subject I’ve yet encountered and it deserves to be as widely read as possible.
Shiraz Socialist 
Just click Like.