At Risk of Mutilation

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

In the land to which Lydia Oluloro has been ordered to return, little girls are mutilated. It doesn't matter whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate. It can happen in their infancy or in their teens. The age varies among ethnic groups, as does the degree of pain. In some African countries, it is only a piece of the clitoris that is cut off. In others, the labia minora are sliced away. Natural protuberances are viewed as ugly, the unchaste accoutrements of prostitutes. Elsewhere, the entire outer genitalia are removed and the two sides of the vulva sutured together until marriage, leaving only a tiny opening for the excretion of blood and urine. Infections and hemorrhaging are not uncommon; intercourse can be excruciatingly painful. The surgical methods are prescribed not by science but by a tradition that expects girls to go through such rites of passage before marriage. Oluloro is afraid that if she is deported from Portland, Oregon, to Nigeria, her two daughters Shade, 6, and Lara, 5 -- both American citizens -- will be mutilated.

The case is at the center of a multifaceted controversy. Oluloro has, for one thing, asked for "cultural asylum," basing her claim to U.S. residency on her fear for her daughters' physical well-being. The State Department and human-rights activists are watching from the sidelines as an immigration judge prepares his decision, due March 23. It will not be an easy one. Oluloro's arguments are part of a messy battle she is waging with her ex-husband over the girls' custody, and the request for asylum could simply be a legal ploy.

Meanwhile, legislators have expressed concern that female- genital mutilation is being practiced in the U.S. by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Though actual instances are rare, a bill to ban the procedure was introduced in the New York State legislature in early March. It mirrors efforts on the national level by Colorado Representative Pat Schroeder to outlaw such mutilation. Says she: "It's terribly important to do so if we're going to preach on this issue in the international community." Yet even as American feminists inveigh against the practice, African professional women in the U.S. decry these protests as arrogant and misguided.

Advocates for women in the U.S. want the Oluloro affair to be a test case. "Claims based on gender oppression have not been recognized as a basis for asylum," says Nancy Kelly, directing attorney of the Women's Refugee Project, a joint program of Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Somerville (Massachusetts) Legal Services. "Harm that is done to women is seen as a personal, private or cultural matter. Genital mutilation has not been seen as a type of harm." The feminist mainstream has been particularly galvanized by the highly personalized documentary film and book on female-genital mutilation, Warrior Marks, co-authored by novelist Alice Walker. Walker sees it as a heinous form of patriarchal oppression, characterized by "the feeling of being overpowered and thoroughly dominated by those you are duty bound to respect." About 25 countries in Africa engage in mutilation: an estimated 98% of women are "circumcised" in Djibouti and Somalia, 90% in Ethiopia, 80% in Sudan, 75% in Mali. Walker and her allies have called for change not only in American law but also in the way African nations enforce their legal bans against the tradition.

Schroeder applauds the latest State Department report on human rights, which for the first time includes the treatment of women. "Until now, you could burn, torture or mutilate a woman, and it was never counted. We finally made them see that abuse of women is a human-rights issue, not a cultural issue."

The Colorado Democrat favors economic sanctions against countries that tolerate genital mutilation. But many African-born women who live in the U.S. are opposed. "Sanctions are stupid," says Dr. Asha Mohamud, a Somali-born pediatrician in Washington. "The practice is not being done intentionally to harm anyone. Mothers do it in good faith for their children. If you cut funding to these countries, you are hurting the people you want to protect. The goal should be to improve the economic and educational status of women."

"Warrior Marks is a portrayal by an outsider," says Dr. Nahid Toubia, a Sudanese-born obstetrician in New York City. "It suggests, 'I, Alice Walker, save the beautiful children who are being tortured by their own people.' It's like saying Harlem women give their children AIDS because they don't love them. In reality it's more complex." Adds Mohamud: "You can't threaten or dictate to people on this issue. It's not going to stop overnight."

That is precisely what Oluloro believes. If she is deported and takes her U.S.-born daughters home, she says, her family will look askance at her American ways. "When I had a baby here, I called home, and my senior sister was asking if they'd circumcised her," recalls Oluloro, who underwent a clitoridectomy when she was five. "I said no, they don't do it in America here. It sounded so funny to her. She couldn't believe that. She said that if we come home, they are going to do it for her no matter what." Though Oluloro belongs to the Yoruba, perhaps the most Westernized of Nigeria's tribes and one in which female circumcision has long been in decline, she hails from a rural area where it is still widely practiced.

The State Department, while attempting to appear sensitive, may not want a new precedent set or a new category of "cultural asylum" established. In an ambivalently worded telegram to the presiding judge in Portland, the State Department declared that its latest reports indicate that female circumcision is practiced in more than half of Nigeria; still, it said, while the girls might be cut, "that is not an inevitable consequence." The telegram added that if Oluloro was deported, she did not have to live where mutilation remains the custom.

That does little to clarify the case. Oluloro traveled to Oregon to marry a fellow Nigerian who had a U.S. residency permit. Over the years, she says, she and the children endured beatings by her husband Emmanuel, leading to a divorce last year. Lydia, who works as a janitor and has custody of the girls, lost the right to stay in the country because Emmanuel never completed the paperwork necessary to give her legal-residency status. She says she cannot leave her children to an abusive father -- but how can she take them home to an abusive culture? Emmanuel contests her story, and the government has called him as a witness against his ex-wife. In the courtroom, the story is a he- said, she-said quagmire. She accuses him of bigamy; he accuses her of multiple marriages as well. He says he opposes mutilation and that she once suggested bringing her daughters back to Nigeria for cutting. She denies that. Life in Portland has changed her attitude, she says. "I look at ((Western women)), and I don't see any difference between me and them. And they can't see any difference in me. They can't look inside of me."

But many African immigrants, unlike Oluloro, still cling to the tradition of their homeland. In Seattle internist Carol Horowitz has treated more than 20 Somali refugees, virtually all with the most severe form of mutilation. Yet, she notes, "some of them say they understand that circumcision isn't done here, and they feel sad about it." Adds Horowitz: "If your only message is that this is barbaric, women who have been circumcised will be less likely to seek the medical care they need. They're not doing it to their children to hurt them. They're doing it because they love them. Until they got here, they never realized it could be any other way."

With reporting by Wendy Cole/New York and John Snell/Portland