A few months ago many Briton’s were appalled to find out that West Midlands Police in the UK were running a ‘no prosecution policy’ with regards female genital mutilation. West Midlands Police had decided that it was often ‘in the best interests of the child’ for there not to be a prosecution when FGM was discovered. Critics of Islam who saw this statement from West Midlands Police were horrified and some suspected that this policy of going easy on the practitioners of FGM was brought in to pander to the significant Muslim population of the West Midlands Police area.
Contrast West Midlands Police’s abject appeasement with how a police force in the United States has behaved. A Detroit accident and emergency doctor has been charged with performing FGM on young girls. Not for the Detroit police the hand-wringing or pronouncements about community cohesion or ‘best interests of the child’ that characterise West Midlands Police, Detroit police just nicked this doctor and there was no messing and no whining. The female doctor, Jumana Nagarwala, has denied the charges and has been remanded in custody until Monday 17th April 2017.
Here’s part of a Voice of America report on this case.
An emergency-room doctor in the U.S. Midwest has been arrested and charged with performing female genital mutilation on girls between the ages of 6 and 8, in the first criminal case brought under a 1996 law that outlawed the practice.
Jumana Nagarwala, a 44-year-old doctor at a hospital in Detroit, Michigan, is accused of performing genital mutilation on young girls as far back as 2005, according to a criminal complaint released Thursday. The U.S. Department of Justice said she “performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims.”
Nagarwala had an initial court appearance before a U.S. magistrate Thursday in Detroit and was ordered detained until Monday, pending a further hearing on the felony charges she is facing, which specifically involve two 7-year-old girls she operated on in February.
Senior officials called the charges “disturbing” and “deplorable,” and said U.S. law-enforcement agencies “are committed to doing whatever is necessary to bring an end to this barbaric practice, and to ensure no additional children fall victim to this procedure.”
Physician denies charges
A preliminary criminal complaint released by the U.S. Department of Justice said Nagarwala told federal agents she knew that performing female genital mutilation is a crime in the United States and denied that she conducted the procedure on anyone.
Nagarwala, who received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, has been licensed as a physician in Michigan since 2001; state records show no formal complaints or disciplinary action against her. Her lawyer, Shannon Smith, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
Read the rest of this article from Voice of America via the link below:
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-doctor-arrested-fgm-charges/3809407.html
If convicted Nagawala faces a hefty fine and up to five years imprisonment.
I can’t help but notice the marked difference between how British police forces deal with this crime and how the Detroit police are dealing with this sort of abuse. The first instinct of the British police is to pander and appease and try to do their utmost not to upset Muslims by enforcing the law by arresting alleged FGM perpetrators. The American police on the other hand, have refreshingly decided to throw ‘community cohesion’ to the wind and enforce the law that prohibits FGM.
Maybe it’s time for the British police to take a leaf out of Detroit’s police book and start to deal with the appalling problem of FGM, to stop listening to Muslim whines or threats and get on with enforcing the law and protecting those girls at risk of being mutilated in this most terrible way.
Actually, it’s worse. There was due to be some announcement of this so a prosecution was rushed through, except they victimised a Doctor (Dharmasena ?) who had been trying to repair the damage done by FGM and a complicated birth which had gone wrong.
The prosecution is technically correct, but the problem is as ever ignoring those deliberately performing FGM and dumping on someone who was totally opposed to it, but was put in a difficult situation
Are you referring to the British case that collapsed? I seem to recall that a case emerged that was stopped part way through. It will be interesting to see what emerges in the US FGM charge at the trial.
I completely agree with you that the problem lies with those who have ignored the issue of FGM and have not prosecuted it for ‘community cohesion’ reasons when it has been discovered for
As some British police forces appear to have been trained to react like Pavlov’s dogs and display instant obedience at the first cry of “racism”, then the obvious thing here is to point out the truth that they are guilty of racism in refusing to protect little Pakistani girls from FGM when any white British parents would be locked away in Broadmoor indefinitely for such barbarism.
Print one newspaper head-line of “Racist police betray Pakistani girls” and see how fast they come running.