My wife just thinks I'm mean to her some times! But, seriously, this is frickin' barbaric!
Ethiopian girl recounts night of terror
Endieyewho Asmare's husband was jailed for two days
By the BBC's Ellene Mocria
Addis Ababa
The young girl, 15 years old, sat with her back
to the audience.
She wept many times and sometimes appeared
to lose control.
But time and again, she would pick up from
where she had stopped and continued to
relate her night of terror.
"My name is Endieyewho Asmare. I am from
Assosa," she begun her testimony.
"At the age of 13 I was
married because my
mother was ill.
"One night my husband
came while I was
asleep. He came with six
other men and closed all
the doors including the gate.
"Then they picked me up from where I was
sleeping, held me down and said that they
were going to circumcise me.
"I told them that I was circumcised when I was
a little girl and that they shouldn't be doing it
to me again.
Knives
"But they came with their knives and they held
me down.
"I was terrorized and screamed over and over
again: 'Don't do this to me, don't do this to
me, please get out!'
"But they refused and kept holding me down.
"With the knives they were holding they just
cut me up (mutilated my genitals). It was
really painful.
Bleeding
"Eventually, they brought something and put it
inside me to stop the bleeding but I kept on
bleeding so they poured two jerry cans full of
water over me and left."
Endieyewho shocked a seminar on violence
against women in Ethiopia by publicly speaking
out about her experience of female
circumcision, or genital mutilation.
"Seven days later, my
mother-in-law came to
visit on her way to the
market and when she
saw me, she was
shocked.
"The bleeding had not
stopped, the wound had
not healed and there
were flies all over me.
"She ran to my family and my mother came and
took me back home.
"Later, my father took me to the Ethiopian
Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) branch
office in Assosa and they put me in hospital
where I stayed for one month."
Once again, she burst into tears; sobs and
sniffing could be heard among the audience.
Endieyewho managed to gain control again and
boldly went on.
Two-day sentence
"After a month in hospital, I was sent to a
place called Mother Teresa's Home where I
stayed for a month.
"With the help of the EWLA, I have been able
to file a case against my husband.
"The association had me checked up at the
hospital again where I got a medical certificate
confirming what happened to me and gave the
police a copy.
"My husband was jailed
only for two days and
released."
The audience was in an
uproar, but she had not
finished her testimony
and courageously
continued, in between bouts of tears.
"Then one day, my husband came with people
from the Urban Dwellers Association because
he had accused my family of taking me, his
wife, away.
"They wanted to force me to go back but I
refused.
"Nothing has been done about the criminal
case we filed against him. Instead we (my
family and I) are being hounded by my
husband's people.
"And we don't know what to do about that.
"Now I have come here to Addis Ababa to tell
about these injustices."
Brutal
Someone came up and helped her get down
from the stage.
The audience was shocked into silence - her
sobbing the only sound in the large hall.
The Coordinator of the Ethiopian Women
Lawyers Association (EWLA) branch office in
Assosa, Emebet Olana, was with Endieyewho
when I caught up with them later on.
"What happened to her was extremely brutal...
She was very young when it happened.
Rape
"Of course, as everybody knows, there are
many problems regarding legal procedures in
this country.
"For example Endieyewho's case has been
dragging on for two years without a verdict.
"It has further become
complicated because
the accused has now
become the accuser.
"Although he and his
friends have been
charged, he has
recently filed a civil
case against her family
claiming that they
have taken his wife
away from him.
"There are many cases
related to women such as wife battering,
abduction, divorce cases, land ownership,
rape, sexual harassment and others.
"Unfortunately, regardless of the fact that the
law is supposed not to be discriminatory, men
and women are not perceived as equal in
courts.
"So I don't know when Endieyewho's case will
be finalized."
Reduction
Nearly all of Ethiopia's ethnic groups practise
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) except a few
in the southern region and Gambella.
According to the latest statistics - from 1998 -
73% of Ethiopian girls had undergone FGM.
This is an improvement from 1990 when,
according to the same statistics, 90% of girls
were found to have been mutilated.
Endieyewho Asmare and Emebet Olana hope
that new studies being undertaken will show a
similar reduction in the number of women
facing the knife. |
