Ethiopians protest against U.S. circumcision jailing

Nov 18, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — Hundreds of Ethiopians took to the streets of Addis Ababa on Saturday calling for a retrial of an Ethiopian jailed in the United States for circumcising his daughter.

In what was believed to be the first such case in the United States, a Georgia judge sentenced Khalid Adem to 10 years in prison this month for removing his two-year-old daughter’s clitoris with scissors in 2001.

The jailing has fuelled a passionate debate across Africa, with some approving the punishment but others opposing it.

Carrying placards such as “Free Khalid Adem – He is innocent”, about 300 people marched across the Ethiopian capital on Saturday demanding a retrial.

“The trial against my brother was partial, biased and based on insufficient provisions of information. The judge heard only three of 10 defense witnesses before he passed his guilty verdict,” 25-year-old relative Adel Adem told Reuters.

“The fact that his little daughter is circumcised does not prove his guilt. There is no strong hard evidence against him. This was just a nasty divorce fight that ended up in Khalid being framed by his wife for something he did not commit.”

During the trial, Khalid and the victim’s mother, blamed each other for the circumcision.

Adel said his brother’s supporters were calling for a new trial at a different venue in the United States.

An estimated 3 million girls and women are mutilated or cut each year on the African continent, the U.N.’s children’s charity UNICEF says, in a custom viewed in many traditional cultures as a necessary rite of passage.

Circumcision is also used to control or reduce women’s sexual desire to lessen the chance of promiscuity in marriage.

Opponents say it disfigures and sometimes kills, causes psychological harm, complicates childbirth in life and reduces sexual pleasure for women.

(Reuters)