The circumcision of children should be immediately
banned!
Recently a court in Cologne, Germany, voted to ban the
practice of male circumcision in its province after an incident where a
young boy’s
life was in danger while being circumcised. This court ruling made it so
that the practice of circumcision would be outlawed in all of Germany.
This ban on the intrusion on children’s’ bodies quickly became a point
for serious social debate and conflict. The Jewish and Islamic religious
movements were greatly alarmed by this news. They considered this
verdict as a restriction on the individual and parents’ freedoms and
rights to make decisions for their children. But on the other hand the
secular and children’s rights organizations supported this court ruling
and declared that the practice of circumcision due to religious
motivations is an injurious practice on a child's body and should
therefore be banned because “fundamental
right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights
of the parents"..
Further, that it must be made a law where the individual himself can
only make this choice and only consciously at a mature age.
The importance of banning the practice of male minors’
circumcision became a broad and an international movement. Critical
comments about this practice quickly expanded in the media and social
networking sites such as Facebook. A survey from a prestigious
institution in German revealed that more than 50 % of the population in
Germany confirm and support the Cologne ´s court ruling.
After the Cologne´s court ruling, during a protest
demonstration, the representatives of doctors in a famous hospital
Chorghar in Zurich, Switzerland
declared he does not accept the circumcision of boys, because a child
does not have the mental maturity to decide on the severing a part of
his own body, and also a child does not have the maturity necessary to
conscientiously oppose or to affirm the parent’s decision on religious
beliefs.
Today, July 19, 2012 an extraordinary meeting was held
with the parliamentary parties including the Christian Social Party, the
Social Democratic Party, the Green Party and the liberals. Despite the
international support for the Cologne court’s ruling on the banning the
practice of male minors’ circumcision, in this meeting the practice of
circumcision of boys was permitted only on conditional situations in a
medical facility that inflicts no unnecessary pain on the child.
Actually the German parliamentary decision except of a political
compromise between the religious movements and the political stance of
the children’s rights movements has a symbolic aspect and cannot not
refute the Cologne court’s ruling.
Children First Now supports the Cologne court’s decision
and declares that the practice of circumcision is a violation of child’s
body and that circumcision is not about the freedom of the parents of a
child in cutting and injuring a part of the body of their child but is
only a religious act with religious motivation and has no medical,
scientific and rational justification. Children have no religion and
should be protected from any physical, spiritual and religious
encroachments.
The Children First Now Organization has been campaigning
to ban circumcision for many years. We believe that the Cologne court’s
ruling is the modern society’s response in defending children's rights
and opposing any physical and mental encroachment upon them.
Fortunately today the movement against the practice of
circumcision of boys in the world is expanding. We invite all children’s
rights organizations who are against circumcision, especially in
Islam-stricken countries, to join to this important movement.
The Children First Now
International Campaign for Children's Rights
July 23, 2012
