Court Awards Damages After Genital Mutilation Test
“Uppsala Municipality (in Sweden) has been ordered to pay 60,000 kronor ($8,400) to the family of a girl of Somali origin who was forced to undergo an examination to check whether she had been circumcised.
Uppsala social workers forced the then 10-year-old girl to submit to the examination to see whether she had been subjected to genital mutilation (circumcision) while on a family holiday in Kenya in 2004.
The girl was collected by police from school shortly after returning from a visit to relatives.
The municipality argued… that the girl’s family showed reluctance to cooperate in the social services’ investigation, but the district court rejected this explanation.
“The social services’ actions were based on the family’s ethnicity.
The child’s rights and the rule of law were set aside,” …
The girl herself was not given a chance to explain her situation and she was not offered any extra support.
The examination showed that the girl had not been circumcised.”
http://www.thelocal.se/26194/20100421/
