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YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA - With a knife, a razor blade, scissors or a needle, half of Indonesia's girls are circumcised, and a new study found that it is a tradition more rooted in family folkways than religion.
"Cultural reproduction occurs in the household," said Sri Purwatiningsih, a researcher of Center for Population and Policy Studies at Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta. "Circumcised grandmothers tend to circumcise their daughter. A mother who was circumcised by the grandmothers will most likely circumcise their daughter."
Purwatiningsih presented her findings Thursday, the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, at the university, where the center refers to the procedure as female genital mutilation or cutting.
Indonesia ranks third in the world, at 49%, for the rate of prevalence of female circumcision, after Mali, at 83%, and Mauritania, at 51%. According to an Indonesian Basic Health Research study from 2013, 51% of the nation's girls up to the age of 11 have been circumcised. Among them, 72.4% were circumcised at between 1 and 5 months, 13.9% when they were between 1 and 4 years old, and 3.3% were 5 to11 years old.
UN definition
Female genital mutilation refers to "any procedure involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genitals for nonmedical reasons," according to the United Nations Population Fund. The most widespread practices worldwide involve partial or total removal of the clitoris, prepuce, or both, and the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora. The UNPF found the practice is linked to child marriage and said it "predates rise of Christianity and Islam," and was practiced as recently as the 1950s in Western Europe and the United States because a clitoridectomy was performed "to treat perceived ailments, including mental and sexual disorders."
More than an estimated 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation, and "the impacts on their health and well-being can be immediate - from infections, bleeding or psychological trauma - to chronic health conditions that can occur throughout life," according to a U.N. release. It continued to say, "the cost of treating the total health impacts" of female genital mutilation is $1.4 billion globally per year.
"FGM is not only a catastrophic abuse of human rights that significantly harms the physical and mental health of millions of girls and women; it is also a drain on a country's vital economic resources," said Dr. Ian Askew, director of the World Health Organization's Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research on a U.N. website.
Indonesian study
A survey focused on Indonesian girls and women, conducted by the Center for Population and Policy Studies in 2017, found 87.3% of 4,250 households in 10 provinces obtained female circumcision information from their parents. Of those surveyed, 92.7% said they believed the practice was primarily religious and 84.1% said the practice is also traditional. An overwhelming majority of respondents, 97.8%, approved of female circumcision, saying the tradition should be practiced.
The survey also found that traditional Indonesian birth attendants were responsible for 45% of female circumcisions, midwives or nurses conducted 38%, female circumcision specialists performed 10%, and doctors performed 1%.
Hamim Ilyas, a professor at the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Islamic National University Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta told VOA Indonesia that only those who interpret Islam in the most literal way can find justification for female circumcision in its teachings.
He considers the best approach to the issue to be "state based," meaning families should obey Indonesia's laws. He used traffic lights as an example, religion never taught a person to stop at a red light, but the signal represents a law that drivers know to obey.
"The minister of health's regulation has forbidden FGM. ... However, the government seems to be hesitant under pressure," from fundamentalist sectors of Indonesian society, he said. "If the government is determined, if the government is brave, the practice can be eradicated. But the government seems not ready yet [to enforce the law] because the people are not ready yet. We have to change our society, to be a society that anti-FGM. It is through the transformation of religious understanding - not [by] changing the teaching, but changing the understanding of it."
Indonesian law
Ika Ayu, an activist at the Jaringan Perempuan Yogyakarta, or Yogyakarta Female Network, criticized the government's indecisiveness on FGM, as even Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the country's top Muslim clerical body, rejected the practice in 2008.
Despite the Ministry of Health regulations, she said, "The government has not ever been clear in regulating FGM, while we know FGM has been listed as harmful practice as part of [the U.N.'s] Sustainable Development Goals."
She urged the government to be more decisive and added, "Today, we commemorate zero tolerance for female genital mutilation, but in practice, it is still being done. We should ask, 'How can a country guarantee the fulfillment of every citizen's rights?' Female circumcision violates individual rights because it was done without the girls' consent."
Dr. Mukhotib, a reproductive health activist who, like many Indonesians uses only one name, told VOA that the many reasons to reject female circumcision include the fact that it has no medical benefit, countering traditional beliefs.
"There is no benefit to FGM. It does not make women healthier," he said. "If there is no medical benefit, why bother?"
Virginia Gunawan contributed to this report which originated in VOA's Indonesian Service.