London Doctor exposes global FGM scandal

From Russia to Australia, and America to Iraq, Dr John Chua's film documents the horrors of female genital mutilation - and what's being done to stop it

Nearly a decade ago, I started a charity project training ordinary Iraqis to become citizen journalists. While that project was marginally successful, I met Iraqi activists from the NGO Wadi trying to document female genital mutilation (FGM) in their country. Subsequently, I worked with them to produce short videos about FGM in Iraq, which were aired by the BBC in 2013.

In time, I got to know more about FGM in many countries around the world. Conventional wisdom says that FGM comes from Africa, was later adopted by certain Islamic sects and spreads globally through migration. However, I started to develop an alternate opinion— what if FGM is also a native phenomenon around the world, largely unrelated to modern migration?

I began gathering documentary evidence of FGM as an indigenous practice on all continents except Antarctica and now have conclusive proof. Having traveled across the world, from the most dangerous conflict zones to bucolic rural America, I filmed testimonies that might surprise most people.

For nearly a century until the 1960's some white Christian doctors in the United States advocated cutting the clitoris to prevent masturbation. These American doctors were originally influenced by 19th century British medical journals, which advocated removing the clitoris to cure epilepsy, ‘hysteria’, and other illnesses. I have filmed testimonies from American FGM survivors as well as doctors. I have medical and church documents to support their claims.

Covering 15 countries on six continents, I have now produced a feature documentary featuring witnesses offering incredible and mystical reasons given for FGM. In Pattani, Thailand, FGM is thought to prevent serious illnesses including AIDS. In the Peruvian Amazon, cutting the clitoris among the Shipibos meant that she is a ‘real’ woman and not a lesbian. The Emberá women of Colombia cut babies to prevent the clitoris from growing larger, for they fear it would become a penis. Among certain Aboriginal tribes of central Queensland in Australia, FGM was considered a puberty rite, and the bodily fluids from the practice drunk as medicine.

Almost everywhere I visited, FGM is a taboo secret practice. I conducted a survey of 119 Muslim women in Singapore. 86 of them were cut. Recently, rumours swirled about British parents taking girls to Singaporean clinics to get cut. When one calls these clinics, they all say they would not cut a British child. However, I visited them posing alternatively as a British or American parent to record videos of them offering to circumcise my nonexistent daughter.

Indeed in many urban areas around the world, the practice has moved into medical clinics. Last year, an Egyptian teenager died after getting ‘circumcised’ by a doctor. Yet, in Dagestan, Russia, I interviewed a gynaecologist who is still convinced that the female genital cutting she performs offers health and sanitary benefits.

Summer is the traditional cutting season where some parents in the West take daughters to faraway lands to get cut and recuperate. Their actions are criminal but it is also clear various forms of FGM can be found globally, across many religions and races, and has existed for centuries. Why are humans obsessed with this cutting? The most obvious answer is that there is a universal fear of sex and female sexuality. But why has FGM been so long associated with Africa when there might actually be more countries outside Africa where this is indigenous? More research and more education are needed to uncover the true extent of this madness.

Dr Chua’s film on the extent of FGM worldwide, The Cut: Exposing FGM Worldwide, is to be broadcast later this year. A video of experts can be seen here