Focus on Minnesota found a state lawmaker and survivors of a “hidden” brutality raising concerns as neither prosecutions nor sanctions could be linked to a felony impacting women and girls.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) may have taken himself out of the running to maintain his executive seat amid sweeping, unchecked, multibillion-dollar fraud schemes, but that wasn’t the only crime in his state where accountability appears to be lacking. Home to the largest Somali population in America, among which United Nations data contends roughly 98% of females have been the victim of genital mutilation, a records review by Fox News Digital failed to pin down any prosecutions.
“It’s hidden — it’s a cultural practice, and who is doing the cutting could be a family member or a doctor who is also in that same culture,” Minnesota state Rep. Mary Franson (R) told the outlet more than three decades after the procedure that cuts, piercess, removes or sews closed parts or all of the female’s external genitals was made a felony in her state.
The lawmaker added, “For some within Minnesota’s Somali community, the issue is less about public crime statistics and more about private silence — a practice survivors say is carried in secrecy, shame and fear.”
Survivor and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who started her own foundation advocating for an end to FGM, told Fox News Digital, “Female genital mutilation is violence against the most vulnerable — children.”
“It causes infection, incontinence, unbearable pain during childbirth, and deep physical and emotional scars that never heal. Religious or cultural practices that deliberately and cruelly harm children must be confronted. No tradition can ever justify torture,” she went on as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about half a million girls and women in the United States have undergone the procedure based on data a decade old.
“Only legal accountability can help reduce that risk. I survived female genital mutilation, and I carry its scars with me. But I refuse to accept that another girl in America must endure what I did in Somalia,” she added as she repeatedly called on President Donald Trump to issue an executive order to strengthen enforcement of the Stop FGM Act of 2020 that he’d signed prior to the end of his first administration.
The act expanded federal jurisdiction in cases concerning interstate and international travel for the procedure. Despite that, Fox News Digital’s review of public records came up empty for prosecutions or sanctions. “The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said prosecutions for state crimes like female genital mutilation are handled by county attorneys and did not identify any FGM cases. County prosecutors contacted for this story also did not identify any prosecutions.”
“They tied my hands and my legs. I remember being held down. I remember the pain — and knowing I could not escape,” survivor Zahra Abdalla, director of the nonprofit Somaliweyn Relief Agency, described to Fox News Digital. The cut, which had not been completed because she kicked a pregnant woman participating in performing the procedure, was washed with salt water. “That pain — I thought I was going to pass out.”
Believing some families take girls back to Somalia to have the procedure on school breaks, she noted some Somali men won’t marry women if they haven’t undergone the procedure, “It’s tied to dowry. It’s tied to marriage. It’s tied to what men expect. Families believe it protects a girl’s value.”
Meanwhile, in July 2019, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) took offense at a question on the subject.
She dubbed calls for her to condemn the procedure “appalling… because I feel like there are bills that we vote on, bills we sponsor, many statements we put out, and then we’re in a panel like this, and the question is posed, ‘Could you and [Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D)] do this?’ And it’s like how often … Should I make a schedule, like, does this need to be on repeat every 5 minutes? Should I be like, so, today I forgot to condemn Al-Qaeda, so here’s the Al-Qaeda one. Today I forgot to condemn FGM, so here it goes. Today I forgot to condemn Hamas so here it goes.”
Watch: Omar says Muslim lawmakers should not be asked to condemn female genital mutilation https://t.co/1C3ZRHcRsd
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) July 24, 2019
Working toward accountability, a bipartisan bill introduced by state Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley (D), co-sponsored by Franson and others, aims to create a “task force on prevention of female genital mutilation.”
“The bill was brought forward by women in the Somali community. I was the chief author,” contended Franson, “but then Democrats told one of the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) women that if I carried the bill, they would not support it. Of course, it’s because they believe I am a racist.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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