SWEDEN: Taxpayers to pay for non-medical circumcision

So the Swedish taxpayer must pay? This will not last.

JTA
November 26, 2014

Swedish lawmakers nix bill requiring parents to pay for circumcision

(JTA) — Swedish lawmakers voted down a bill that would require parents to pay for non-medical circumcision of boys.

The right-wing Sweden Democrats party brought the bill to a vote Tuesday at the regional council of Blekinge County in the country’s south, Sveriges Radio reported. The party claimed that the practice should not be covered by the healthcare system because it is barbaric and compared it to female genital mutilation, according to Swedish media.

But the argument encountered passionate objections during the debate that preceded the voting, including by Anna Ekstrom of the Liberal People’s Party. She rejected the comparison and argued that circumcision was akin to Christian baptism, the Sydostran local newspaper reported.

Dismissing claims that circumcision dulled sexual pleasure, Inga-Lill Siggelsten Blum of Sweden’s Christian Democrats said, “I cannot imagine that there would be billions of men getting circumcised if it did.” [They are not, of course. The vast majority were cut before they could resist.]

The debate is part of a wider discussion across northern Europe on the Jewish and Muslim practice. Interest in the topic renewed in 2012, with left-leaning liberals and secularists calling for a ban for humanitarian reasons, and nationalist anti-immigration parties supporting a prohibition because they feel the custom is foreign and barbaric.

Currently, non-medical circumcision of boys is legal in all of Scandinavia, despite calls to ban it.

STOCKHOLM: 28 girls from one class genitally cut

Bhaskar News
June 21, 2014

SHOCKING: Every girl of same class reported to have undergone genital mutilation in Sweden

Stockholm: A shocking case of female genital mutilation has come to light in a school of Sweden.
At least 28 girls of the same class have reportedly gone through the extreme form of circumcision. The incident came to light after an investigation.

According to the health officials of Norrkoping, every girl of the single class was subjected to the procedure of female genital mutilation.

At least 60 such cases have been reported since March in Norrkoping. Out of 60, at least 28 girls have gone through the torture of extreme circumcision in which clitoris and labia are cut off while the vagina is sewn up leaving a small opening.

The practice of female genitals mutilation is common in 27 countries mostly African and with large Muslim population.

However, Sweden was one of the countries which prohibited the practice of genital mutilation. The country had banned forced circumcision by parents on the child in the year 1999.

The student health coordinator of Norrkoping, Petra Blom Andersson told a newspaper "We're working to inform parents that they could face prison if they come back and their children have undergone female genital mutilation."

The female genital mutilation is a punishable act in Sweden. Since 1982, the punishment was restricted to imprisonment but in 1999, the law was changed.

NEW YORK: World Jewish Congress opposes Swedish and Danish doctors

European Jewish Press
January 31, 2014

World Jewish Congress protests calls by Swedish and Danish physicians to ban religious circumcision

by Maud Swinnen Friday, 31 January 2014 15:30
NEW YORK/STOCKHOLM/ (EJP)---The World Jewish Congress has strongly protested calls by Swedish and Danish medical associations for a ban [age-restriction] on religious male circumcision.

In Sweden, the recommendation came in a resolution unanimously adopted last week by the ethics council of the Sweden Medical Association — a union whose members constitute 85 percent of the country’s physicians, according to Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

It recommended setting 12 as the minimum age for the procedure and the boy’s consent.

Jewish religious circumcision, or brit milah, is performed eight days after birth. Muslims typically circumcise boys before they turn the age of 10.

In Denmark, the Danish College of General Practitioners, which has 3,000 members, argued that non-medical circumcision of boys amounted to ‘’abuse and mutilation.’’

“We are not religious experts, but for medical reasons, we cannot approve a procedure that removes tissue from the genitals in which the risk is so great for serious complications” said the Swedish association’s ethics officer, Thomas Flodin.

The recommendation, which is non-binding, also said that circumcision should be performed only by physicians in a medical facility.

In October, the children’s ombudsmen of all Nordic countries — Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway — released a joint declaration proposing a ban on circumcision.

Swedish Minister for Integration, Erik Ullenhag, said existing rules that allow for religious circumcision would not be changed. Current Swedish legislation states that both medical and non-medical circumcision must be carried out by a licensed professional. Jewish ritual circumcisers (mohels) receive licenses from the national health board, but are required to be attended by a doctor or nurse during the procedure.

‘’The recommendation of the two medical associations is an insulting and intrusive assault on religious freedom,” reacted World Jewish Congress (WJC) CEO Robert Singer.

He added in a statement : “Religious circumcision, a procedure that has been practiced safely for millennia, confers notable health benefits. It is a bulwark against urinary-tract infections, cervical cancer and HIV-AIDS, which is why it is being promoted heavily by medical authorities in Africa and other places. Given the compelling religious freedom and health reasons for religious circumcision, the Swedish and Danish medical associations need to recognize that their call for a ban represents an appeal to xenophobia and ignorance and not enlightened science.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics stated ...

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Director General of the European Jewish Association (EJA), an umbrella group of Jewish organisations active on European level, who has been leading the fight against attempts to ban circumcision and ritual slaughter of animals, said his organization was conducting a join campaign with European Muslim leaders in an attempt to overturn various legislation that ban kosher butchering and circumcision “two traditions that are sacred both to Jews and Muslims.”

SWEDEN: Province proposes circumcision age-restriction

The Jewish Daily Forward
December 19, 2013

Swedish Province Will Ban Circumcision for Boys

Latest Salvo as Bris Battle Spreads Across Europe
A county in Sweden is planning to ban non-medical circumcision of boys, its commissioner said.

Per-Ola Mattsson, commissioner of Blekinge County, said he would move ahead with plans to ban ritual circumcision by bringing the subject up in February with the county's health board, according to an article published Thursday by the Sydöstran Daily.

According to Dagens Medicin, Mattsson, who is also chairman of the Public Health Board of Blekinge, said he opposed the practice because minors "have no possibility to say no to the surgery and therefore the county should not perform these procedures."

Located in southern Sweden, Blekinge County has a population of about 150,000.

In Sweden, nonmedical and medical circumcision may be performed only by licensed professionals, as per legislation from 2001.

Under the legislation, Jewish ritual circumcisers, or mohelim, in Sweden receive their licenses from the country's health board, but a nurse or doctor must still be present when they perform the procedure. Representatives of the country's Jewish community told JTA they are pleased with the arrangement as it does not prevent them from performing the ritual.

In recent years, Scandinavian countries have seen an intensification of efforts to ban [no, to age-restrict] ritual circumcision by activists who say it violates children's rights and by anti-immigration nationalists who seek to limit the effect that Muslim presence is having on Swedish society.

In September, the rightist Sweden Democrats Party submitted a motion in parliament in favor of banning ritual circumcision.

In October, the children's ombudsmen of all Nordic countries - Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway - released a joint declaration proposing a ban [age-restriction] on circumcision.

SWEDEN: Woman arrested for illegal circumcisions

UPI
July 3, 2013

Woman arrested for illegal circumcision of two young boys

EKSJO, Sweden, July 3 (UPI) -- Swedish police have arrested a 36-year-old woman in connection with the illegal circumcision of two young boys in the town of Eksjo, authorities said.

Police spokesman Goran Gunnarsson told the Swedish news agency TT that police received a call from someone who heard the boys screaming.

The unidentified woman apprehended at the scene is believed to be a relative of the two boys.

Charges against her include suspicion of aggravated assault since it is illegal to perform a circumcision in Sweden without supervision by a medical professional.

The Swedish Parliament passed a law in 2001 requiring a professional to be present at all circumcisions.

The law is not only designed to safeguard against pain but also to help prevent potential infection.

STOCKHOLM: Parents held after daughter cut

The Local (Sweden)
August 19, 2012

Parents held over genital mutilation

A man and a woman have been remanded into custody by Attunda district court in Sollentuna on suspicion of having subjected their daughter to female genital mutilation (FGM).

The couple who are both in their 30s are suspected of having allowed the procedure to be carried out on their 3-year-old sometime between January and April 2012 in either Sweden or Gambia.

Female genital mutilation has been illegal in Sweden since 1982. Since 1999 it is an offence even if the procedure is performed in a different country and carries a penalty of up to four years imprisonment.

...

During the almost 30 years that FGM has been banned in Sweden, only 46 suspected cases have been reported, according to a report from Uppsala University published last year.

...

Only two people have been convicted for female genital mutilation, and in both cases it was the afflicted girls themselves who raised the alarm.

...

STOCKHOLM: Row over FGC represented by cake-cutting

Boing Boing

April 18, 2012

Screaming black female circumcision cake controversial

By Rob Beschizza

Swedish culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cut into an unusual cake at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm this Saturday, and found herself at the center of a controversy some might say could have been predicted.

[YouTube image from Boing Boing removed "as a violation of YouTube's policy prohibiting hate speech"
- re-sourced via 'The Local']

The remarkable cake design -featuring a edible black torso and the artist's head screaming as guests tucked in - was intended to draw attention to female genital mutilation in Africa.

Campaigners, however, say it is itself an unacceptable caricature. From Sweden's The Local:

"In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden," [said] Kitimbwa Sabuni, spokesperson for the National Afro-Swedish Association."This was a racist spectacle."

... the culture minister began cutting a large cake shaped like a black woman, symbolically starting at the clitoris. Makode Aj Linde, the artist who created the installation and whose head is part of the cake cut by the minister, wrote about the "genital mutilation cake" on his Facebook page.

"Before cutting me up she whispered, 'Your life will be better after this' in my ear," he wrote in a caption next to the partially eaten cake.

[This is one of the more neutral commentaries, and many of its comments are thought-provoking. Another, less positive, suggests the Minister, who is strong on the right of art to provoke but weak on issues of racism, was ambushed, and the viral video of her laughing as she cuts and eats the cake is the real performance. Here (Al Jazeera) the (black, male) artist explains his intent. Most reports and their commentators just joined the outrage.

What few have noticed is the resemblance to a real "cake party" that is re-enacted time after time in the Western world, with a screaming person and their genitals as the centre of attention, only it's a baby boy, and his genitals really are being cut. With this performance's many layers of irony and satire, it's not clear that the artist intended that.]