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A regional court in Spain launched an inquiry on May 2 into six cases of illegal circumcision of immigrant African girls, amid calls for harsher penalties for practitioners of the operation and immigrant parents who force their children to endure the barbaric procedure.
On May 4, the Official Medical College of Barcelona asked doctors to notify the judge of any suspected cases of genital mutilation so that children could be protected. “This practice cannot be justified with the argument that it’s a cultural rite to be respected”, said the college.
Paediatricians from two hospitals in Zaragoza, the capital of the Aragón region, discovered the mutilations and suspected that at least one of the operations was done very recently in Spain. The Zaragoza city council immediately filed a lawsuit that called the practice a “crime and a violation of human rights”…
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