ZURICH: Hospital lifts male circumcision ban

Israel National News
August 12, 2012

Swiss Hospital Lifts Ban on Circumcision

By Rachel Hirshfeld

A Swiss hospital on Friday said it is lifting the ban on circumcision that had been imposed at the beginning of July following a controversial ruling by a German court, which found that the practice for religious purposes amounted to willful bodily harm.

Officials at the Zurich University Children’s Hospital announced that in the future every male circumcision for religious purposes will be made on a case-by-case basis, taking health factors into account, a Swiss news agency reported.

“The Zurich Children’s Hospital is aware that the circumcision of boys is part of an old and widely spread tradition, be it for religious or social reasons,” a statement said.

It is up to parliament to decide whether the removal of the male foreskin should be a punishable offence, in line with a ban of female circumcision, officials said, according to the news agency.

The hospital management said the decision to resume the practice was taken following consultations with internal and external ethics experts.

SWITZERLAND: Ban religious circumcision - poll

The Local (Switzerland)
July 31, 2012

Ban religious circumcision: Swiss

By Lyssandra Sears (news@thelocal.ch)

A new survey has shown that some 64 percent of Swiss think that religious circumcision should be banned.

Of the 8,000 participants who took part in the survey, conducted by news site 20 Minuten Online, over 67 percent of men and 56 percent of women thought that the practice should be banned.

Interestingly, almost a third of circumcised men also spoke in favour of a ban, with 12 percent wishing in hindsight that they had not been circumcised.

Jewish and Muslim respondents, for whom the practice has religious significance, were against a ban. Some 93 percent of Muslim respondents and 75 percent of Jewish respondents said they would not want a ban. [Implying 7% of Muslims and 25% of Jews would not object to one.]

DecolonizationOver one quarter of the male respondents who took part in the survey were circumcised, with 96 percent of Muslims and 89 percent of Jews having received the intervention. Twenty percent of those who had been circumcised did not belong to either faith. [Suggesting a non-religious circumcision rate of 5%]

Approximately 60 percent of those who voted no to the ban said that they believed such a ban would be an infringement on religious freedom.

Almost a third of the women questioned said they saw no benefit in having a penis circumcised. Nevertheless, half said it was a good thing from a hygiene point of view. The remainder admitted to not knowing whether there were advantages to circumcision or not.

ZURICH: Swiss jurists disagree about hospital action

Eurasia Review
July 29, 2012

Swiss Legal Experts Divided Over Circumcision

By Sophie Douez
Moves by two Swiss hospitals to suspend the practice of circumcising boys in the wake of an adverse court ruling about the procedure in Germany have sparked heated debate amongst legal experts in Switzerland.

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Marcel Niggli, professor of criminal law at Fribourg University told swissinfo.ch the two hospitals had “overreacted”, and questioned why they were acting in response to a ruling in Germany which had no legal implications in Switzerland.

He said that although Swiss and German laws were similar in that they are based on the principle that medical procedures do not constitute inflicted injury when they are carried out to better a person’s health, “a court decision in Germany is not more important [to Switzerland] than one in China or Argentina”.

But professor Martin Killias, a criminologist at Zurich University, said the German ruling was simply a “point of ignition” for a debate which had been brewing for some time. He said the hospitals had “absolutely” taken the right decision in suspending the practice of circumcision.

"I think they are opening a debate and there are obviously several points to be considered,” Killias told swissinfo.ch. “Beyond criminal law, it simply asks the question whether hospitals want to do that? I could imagine that hospitals could say that according to our view this is against our ethical standards in medicine.”

Health benefits?
Although circumcision is traditionally practised as part of a religious ritual, several studies undertaken in recent years suggest that the practice could have health benefits too.

The World Health Organization says there is “compelling” evidence to suggest that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by 60 per cent and is promoting the scale-up of male adult circumcision programmes for HIV prevention in Africa .

“You can show from research done that circumcision betters the health of the person concerned, they have lower risk of contracting or transmitting specific diseases,” said Niggli. “It is not endangering life and this is also what makes the difference with female circumcision.”

He said that if you ruled that medical circumcision amounted to inflicting injury for purposes which did not improve a person’s health, then the same could be argued in the case of cosmetic surgery procedures.

“I find it rather strange that you can do whatever you want as long as it does not have a religious element,” Niggli said.

But Killias said that: “It is up to the patient to decide what he considers an improvement and aesthetical operations can also have direct [positive] psychological impacts, so I think in these circumstances, I don’t see why this [cosmetic surgery] could be problematic in terms of criminal law.”

Competing rights
Killias said although he was not a medical expert, the question of health justifications for circumcision was “controversial”. He said the key point in the debate is that the child is not able to decide for himself if he wants to undergo the procedure for either religious or aesthetic reasons.

“If circumcision was practised at the age of 16 when young people are considered mature in terms of religious self-determination, nobody would debate about it,” he said. “But if it is done with young children, I see that there is obviously a conflict between the rights of the child and the freedom of religion of the parents.”

Niggli argued that as parents, people have both the right and the obligation to act in the best interests in their child, in which case they can take the decision of circumcision on behalf of the child “because circumcision is a small thing, it’s not anything endangering life and you can show that statistically, this betters the health situation”.

As to questions of religious freedom, Killias said history had shown that beliefs within the different religions had evolved and changed over the generations, and so they should be encouraged to do on the question of circumcision as well.

“Democratic and open societies have a right to impose certain values and we do that also in other respects,” he said. “We are more and more outlawing the physical punishment of children and for me, it is hardly acceptable that it should be a criminal offence to slash a child but no problem at all to disfigure its sexual organs forever.”

Earlier story

ZURICH: Two Swiss hospitals stop circumcising

the Australian
July 21, 2012

Some Swiss hospitals follow German circumcision ruling

A GERMAN court ruling that branded circumcision as grievous bodily harm has created waves in Switzerland where a second hospital announced a possible halt to the procedure.

The announcement, by St Gall hospital in the country's northeast, follows a decision on Thursday by the Zurich children's hospital to temporarily suspend the operation, media reported.

"We are in the process of evaluating the legal and ethical stance in Switzerland," Marco Stuecheli, spokesman for the Zurich hospital, told AFP.

"There can be complicated cases where the mother of a child wants a circumcision but the father is opposed to it."

The development is unlikely to affect the practice in Switzerland, where it can be carried out in any hospital for a fee, the spokesman added.

"Most Jewish patients go to specialist doctors known within their community," the spokesman said, adding that the hospital carried out "only one or two circumcisions for religious reasons per month".

A senior executive at the St Gall teaching hospital said a decision would be taken after the summer holidays, Beobachter magazine reported.

In French-speaking Switzerland, a spokesman for Lausanne's university hospital expressed surprise at the level of debate surrounding the issue.

The hospital carried out the operation because it was important that it took place "in the best medical conditions possible", said a spokesman.

The Swiss reaction follows a June ruling by a court in the German city of Cologne ...

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Earlier story

SWITZERLAND: Stricter law against female cutting

swissinfo.ch
July 1, 2012

Law tightened on female genital mutilation

By Susan Vogel-Misicka
A change to the Swiss penal code on female genital mutilation comes into force on Sunday which aims to prevent Swiss-based families from having their daughters circumcised, whether in Switzerland or abroad.

“Thanks to the new provision in our criminal law, mutilation of female genitals can be prosecuted and punished by a Swiss judge, even in cases where the offence has taken place abroad and even when not punishable under that country’s law,” Andrea Candrian, vice head of the Federal Justice Office’s international criminal law unit, told swissinfo.ch.

Under the new legislation, any person who carries out an act of mutilation can be held responsible and punished.

“In addition, persons who have assisted in such a crime or contributed in another way can be prosecuted as well. For example – if a girl’s family has organised a mutilation – then not only the circumciser but also the family members involved can be prosecuted,” Candrian explained.

While the goal is not to target instances of FGM carried out in other countries, the legislation should help deter parents from forcing their daughters to undergo the painful and debilitating procedure.

The degree of mutilation (see box at right) along with the personal circumstances of the perpetrators will determine the severity of the sentence, which could involve up to ten years in prison or substantial fines.

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Unmistakable signal

“The new article is a clear and unmistakable signal that Switzerland does not tolerate this violation of human rights. FGM is a violation of human rights and a severe violation of children’s rights, which explicitly guarantee the right of physical integrity,” Katrin Piazza, spokeswoman for the Swiss National Committee of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) told swissinfo.ch.

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Cultural superiority?
Yet some wonder whether all the fuss over FGM in Switzerland is simply a matter of activism.

“I called community representatives and interpreters from countries where FGM is practised. I asked if they had ever heard anything about FGM going on here and they all said ‘no’,” countered Abdul Abdurahman, a canton Aargau-based social worker and board member of Second@s Plus – an organisation that represents second- and third-generation foreigners.

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“I asked them about the tradition of FGM, and they told me that they’d never do to their daughters what was done to them,” he told swissinfo.ch.

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Abdurahman has also spoken with a number of men about the topic of FGM. “I asked whether they wanted a circumcised wife or not and they said, ‘No, it’s better for the sexuality in our marriage’. They don’t want a woman who is suffering.”