Anti-FGM campaigners have proved ineffective against a rising tide of conservatism. The Assalaam foundation's website described it as "a celebration". This year, the gathering took place in February. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. Yet far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. Such is the tricky partnership of journalism and activism at times. I shelved my article to sabotage the people working on the ground to stop the abuse would defeat the purpose of whatever I wrote. It would destroy the trust they had forged with local leaders, the activists argued, and jeopardise their access to the people they needed to reach. Afterwards, in fraught exchanges with the organisation's staff, it emerged that it was impossible for me to write a journalistic account of the event for the western media without compromising their efforts. Their job was difficult and highly sensitive. I went there with an Indonesian activist organisation that worked within communities to eradicate FGM.
I have not written about the 2006 mass ceremony until now. "They must be chaste to preserve their beauty." His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: "It is necessary to control women's sexual urges," says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation's social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or "female circumcision" that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools.
Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal.
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