Dear Editor - The Sun (Daily Mirror),
We are a group of women with lived experience of Female Genital Mutilation or Cutting, known as FGM or C, in Sri Lanka. This is a harmful and highly secretive cultural practice that has been masquerading as a religious obligation.
FGM or C violates the rights guaranteed to children under the Sri Lankan Constitution as well as Article 3(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sri Lanka signed this Convention in 1990 and ratified it in 1991. It states that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. The continued practice of FGM or C, with successive governments turning a blind eye, openly violates this principle.
While there has been coverage of this practice in the past, we wish to acknowledge the extraordinary contributions made by Miss Nuha Faiz of your newspaper for her comprehensive examination of this issue in her series of articles titled ‘Behind Closed Doors.’ Reflecting in depth research, she has brought unique insights that call into question every argument that has been made to justify and enable this practice over generations. She has also highlighted the failures of public officials to stop it. For highlighting our experiences with a high journalistic standard, we thank her.
We also wish to express our deep appreciation to The Sun (Daily Mirror) and its Editor, Miss Rishini Weeraratne, for providing the platform for this coverage. We note the decision of the newspaper to retract an article due to a request made from representatives of a particular community. Such attempts at censorship are of serious concern for the freedom of the press in Sri Lanka.
A more transparent approach would have been for the leaders of the respective communities to either acknowledge that the practice continues in Sri Lanka and then defend it, supported by undisputed Islamic jurisprudence, or to issue a statement that the practice has been abandoned by the community or communities, placing the interest and safety of the child above all else. The request for retraction of the article, as we the victims of FGM or C see it, is an acknowledgment that the practice continues within these communities in secrecy and behind closed doors.
We hope that your newspaper continues its coverage of this and other difficult topics, some of which will no doubt make people in positions of power feel uncomfortable. However, this is what it means to live in a democracy, and open debate is the path to legal reform that will ban the practice of FGM or C on children once and for all.
Signed,
Khadija Mohammed, Fatima Mohammed and Zainab Mohammed
