FAUZIYA KASSINDJA'S STORY Fauziya Kassindja was the teenage daughter of Togolese businessman who, contrary to local custom, protected his daughters from a tribal practice known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or female circumcision. When Ms. Kassindja's father died suddenly, her father's family forced the 17 year old girl into polygamous marriage with a man more than twice her age, and prepared her for the ritual of genital circumcision. In fear of the mutilation which lay before her, Ms. Kassindja fled Togo with the blessing of her mother and sister.Using a false passport, she traveled to Germany, and then to the United
States. She presented the passport to an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officer on her arrival, explaining that it was not hers but that she had used it to flee her country. She asked for asylum and protection in the United States from the ritual cutting she would have to endure. Instead of receiving such protection, Ms. Kassindja was incarcerated in INS detention facilities for seventeen months and two weeks, while she awaited a final decision in her case. Her story came to the attention of student attorney Layli Miller-Muro, who argued Ms. Kassindja's case before an immigration judge who ultimately denied Ms. Kassindja's request for asylum. Two days later, Ms. Miller-Muro traveled to Beijing, China to attend the United Nations Women's Conference. There, she enlisted the support of Equality Now, the Bahá'í Community, and other human rights organizations, and upon her return to the United States, mobilized the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University to take Fauziya's case on appeal. Ms. Kassindja's case was the occasion for intensive scrutiny of FGM by the international media. In particular, Celia Duggar, Anthony Lewis, and A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, as well as other journalists, were instrumental in bringing Ms. Kassindja's plight and FGM itself to the forefront of the public dialogue on international human rights abuses. This debate featured prominently in Ms. Kassindja's release from detention while her case was pending.   In June, 1996, Fauziya Kassindja became the first woman facing genital mutilation to receive asylum from the Board of Immigration Appeals. Her case set national precedent and established an entirely new basis for asylum law. Not only can those individuals who flee their countries of origin seek refuge from political, ethnic and religious persecution--because of Ms. Kassindja's case, asylum can be granted to offer protection from persecution that is gender-based or, specifically, from female genital mutilation. The Kassindja case was successful not only in opening the door for others to apply for asylum on the basis of persecution unique to women, such as rape, forced marriage, FGM, and forced prostitution. It also spurred the US Congress to pass a law criminalizing female genital mutilation and fueled debate on FGM in the U.S., Africa, and around the world. Today, several countries, including Ms. Kassindja's home country of Togo, have passed laws outlawing Female Genital Mutilation. Learn more about the book, "Do They Hear You When You Cry?"