CAIRO: Minya governor, General Foad Saad El-Din, announced that 36 unlicensed private clinics in Minya were shut down, in a crackdown following the death of 12-year-old Bodour, who was killed during a circumcision operation. The move comes in tandem with Health Minister Hatem Al-Gabali's decision to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy (female genital mutilation [FGM]), a ministry press official told Agence France Presse. Any circumcision will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished, said Al-Gabali, adding that it was a permanent ban . But Gamal Eid, executive director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, was skeptical of the move. He told The Daily Star Egypt, that "the Egyptian government is incapable of taking serious steps to prevent genital mutilation. The government is not serious in tackling the issue and this is its way of saying that everything is under control to close shut down these clinics, Eid added. There was a law issued by the Ministry of Health with more severe punishments for any medical expert who linked to FGM practice that has never actually been implemented in practice, according to Eid. And that is why this crime still exists, Eid added. In another move, the Doctors Syndicate explicitly warned all its members that they are not allowed to conduct genital mutilation operations either in public or private hospitals and clinics, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The syndicate planning to launch a media awareness campaign to educate the public about the psychological and physical damage that results from this practice. The operation is a tradition whereby part of the female genitalia is removed, allegedly to stem sexual desire. There are no benefits or positive effects to the operation, said Ahmed Aliwah, manager of the Circumcision Program at The Egyptian Center for Women s Rights in a previous interview with The Daily Star Egypt. He has worked with around 215 FGM victims. Aliwah also added that 97 percent of the total number of females in six villages in Upper Egypt that he had worked with had undergone the procedure. According to a Demographic and Health Survey carried out by USAID in 2000, 98 percent of Egyptian baby girls are subjected to circumcision. While 75 percent of adult women in the survey said they supported genital mutilation operations, the number was down from 82 percent, in an earlier survey carried out in 1995. With agencies.
