Russian rights activists are urging for a full-fledged investigation into the case of a nine-year-old girl who was forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).
According to a report by Agence France Presse (AFP), the child underwent FGM at a clinic in Magas in June 2019 without her mother’s consent and at her father’s initiative. She was held down by medical personnel and her stepmother who ignored her screams.
The mother already pressed charges against Izanya Nalgiyeva, the gynaecologist at the Aibolit Clinic, who performed the operation. The latter is now on trial after a probe was opened in July 2019.
But the Russian human rights group Stichting Justice Initiative (SJI) said that the case must be elevated to the Investigative Committee for a deeper probe into the clinic and all persons involved.
“Not all accomplices to this crime are in the dock,” Tatyana Savvina, a lawyer with SJI, was quoted as saying in an interview with AFP on Wednesday.
She said the group requested that investigators look into the clinic’s management on suspicion of sexual abuse and intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to a minor.
Savvina said SJI will file charges against all persons involved including the father and the stepmother.
In a separate comment, an unidentified spokesman for the Investigative Committee in Ingushetia, Zurab Geroyev, said that the committee welcomed the request and that the case was being looked into.
“So far a decision has not been made,” he was quoted as saying.
SJI said cutting female genital was rife in the conservative majority-Muslim Northern Caucasus, with hundreds of girls subjected to the life-threatening procedure yearly.
Russia currently has no specific law banning female genital cutting, and that the probe into the case will be the first in the country.
