Austrian taxpayers fund film exposing female mutilation

The Austrian government has funded a 27-minute filmed expose about female mutilation in North Africa called “Cutting Silence”. Some 120- million North African girls and women suffer severe pain- and health problems because of forced genital mutilation

It is called fibulation: when most of the girls' labia and clitoris are cut away and sewn together without anesthetic, leaving only a small gap for urination and menses. This usually is done to little north-African girls before they reach the 'marriagable age' of eight. Sexual intercourse is excruciating for such girls and women, and they often die because this butchery is carried out by older women without any medical knowledge. One of the best-known women in international public life who described in her book, Infidel, how she had been forced to undergo this procedure - on a kitchen table with a filthy knife - is anti-jihadist author, ex-Dutch MP and Somalian refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who now campaigns all over the United States for the rights of Islamic women. (video above). Similarly painful procedures are also suffered by teenage boys in African societies, who have to attend adult initiation-schools where they undergo mutilations to their penises. In both cases, many victims die, often by bleeding to death or from infected sexual organs. In the case of the boys', it's an animist African clan tradition. In the case of the North African girls, this mutilation is their interpretation of the dictates under Islam. The film has now been selected for screening at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles in February, report here . Since its start in 1992, this festival has annual attendance rates averaging 200,000, and presents 175 films from across the world, show-casing the diversity and complexity of people of African descent. Also see: Moroccan dad arrested in Netherlands for genitcal mutilation of girl: here Digital Film Award "Cutting Silence" is already receiving awards; for best costume design at the International Digital Video and HD Film Festival; and the Digital film award at the Durban International Film Festival 2008. For funding report by the government of Austria, see This film uses Somalian actors to examine the traditional, soul-destroying practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in North African countries. Filmed in South Africa, the fact-based film explores the dilemma of a family on the eve of their daughter’s planned circumcision. A mother’s vivid memories of her own brutal and traumatic experience cast doubt in her mind while her daughter prepares for the 'rite of passage' demanded by their community to ensures social acceptance within the clan. Irene - also the place of great suffering for Boer women A Somalian village was built in the agricultural village of Irene north of Pretoria where the film was shot. To set a film in Irene -- about the tremendous suffering still being forced upon girls and women-- is eerily appropriate. This also houses of of the infamous Boer concentration camps -- put up by the invading colonial British army' during their scorched-earth campaign of Boer farms to house the Boer women and children, and where 27,000 of the citizens of the independent Boer Republic of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State had perished from hunger, disease and deliberate neglect between 1900 and 1902 - and eventually forced the Boer citizen-soldiers into signing their surrender with the Treaty of Vereeniging, where they lost their two independent republics to the colonial British government. see This film is also meant to show the tremendous physical and mental suffering caused by female mutilation -- not for the men obviously, but for the women. Buy the film via PayPal And, although it was entirely funded by the taxpayers of Austria, the film must still be purchased before it can be viewed by the general public: “Cutting Silence” can be bought via Paypal here - the DVD costs £17 plus postage: see