Embargoed: December 1, 2016
Africans speak out against the mass circumcision campaign
We respect science honestly, but we do not support what science brings to finish us, to defile our cultures, defile our rights.
—Prince Hillary Maloba
Since 2008, western public health giants* have been
circumcising Africans by the millions to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.
American taxpayers are funding the effort through the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). An estimated 12 million men and boys have been circumcised to date. The world has not heard a word from them until now.
Dec. 1, 2016 (World AIDS Day) – The VMMC
Experience Project sent cameras into Uganda and Kenya to document the
realities of the mass circumcision program. Local investigators
conducted interviews with 90 affected men and women and found:
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Africans are told circumcision conveys immunity from HIV.
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Condom use is at an all-time low, and AIDS is on the rise.
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The program is killing the very people it is supposed to help.
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No follow-up post circumcision (cut-and-release approach).
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Resentment and outrage among Africans.
The “voluntary medical male circumcision” (VMMC)
public health program is the first mass surgical campaign in human
history. It targets Africans exclusively, leading some to question
whether there are underlying racial motives. For centuries, western
stereotypes have held that African men are lascivious or hypersexed,
unable to control their sexual urges. Compulsory African-American male
circumcision campaigns were proposed as early as the nineteenth century.
Prince Hillary Maloba is a native Kenyan, director of the
VMMC Experience Project, and the driving force behind the investigation.
“Male circumcision,” he explains, “as a project that has been applied
for we [sic] Africans, has failed to reduce HIV the way we were told.
Two, we view it as a violation of human rights. How target only one race
in the entire world?”
Bishop Cleophas Matete, another native Kenyan, agrees: “I
believe the entire process of trying to test it in Africa was wrong from
the beginning.”
The mass circumcision campaign was introduced to reduce the
incidence of HIV in fourteen sub-Saharan African countries that did not
initially practice genital cutting. However, UNAIDS data indicate that
the African HIV epidemic has only worsened since 2010—shortly after VMMC
was implemented. For the first time since the war on AIDS began, HIV is back on the rise.
The World Health Organization claims that male circumcision
curbs female-to-male HIV transmission by up to 60 percent and provides
lifelong partial protection against HIV and other sexually transmitted
infections. Their conclusions derive from a process of contentious
surgical experimentation on Africans.
Embargoed: December 1, 2016
Opponents allege that the targeting of impoverished
Africans constitutes a racial and human rights issue. Comparisons are
made to the Tuskegee syphilis study.
Others argue that the program results in a dangerous false
security. The present investigation confirms that men, women, and teens
are abandoning condoms out of a belief that they are already protected
by circumcision. This in turn increases the spread of HIV.
Prior to the VMMC Experience Project investigation, none
have consulted or followed up with the men and women who have been
directly affected. Many are living in rural poverty, invisible to the
developed world. They have had no platform or voice in the circumcision
agenda. Maloba’s investigation is the first to shed light on the African
side of the story.
African men and women say the campaign is violating their
rights, confusing their cultural identity, and profoundly worsening the
AIDS epidemic. They implicate the program in the spike in HIV cases we
have seen in recent years. Seven respondents in Maloba’s investigation
said that they had acquired HIV because of misinformation around
circumcision. “I blame those who told me that if I get circumcised I
won’t get HIV,” said one respondent, “and I got HIV already!” Others
mourned the loss of friends, brothers, relatives, and neighbors to AIDS
following the procedure they believed would protect them. “These people
are dying of HIV due to ignorance,” a respondent explained.
“If we don’t stop this thing,” Maloba warns, “this community will not have a generation that will take care of the old people.”
Instead of mass circumcision, Africans want funding for
sustainable medical facilities, anti-retroviral medications (ARVs), more
durable condoms, HIV education, and poverty reduction initiatives. Many
cite AIDS -related tragedies from the VMMC program. They seek an end to
the circumcision campaign as a public health disaster and a form of
cultural imperialism from the West. “It is something that has been
imposed on us,” a reverend explained in his interview. “If I could get a
forum to fight it, I could fight it very hard.”
*VMMC-promoting institutions include the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, USAID, PEPFAR,
Jhpiego (Johns Hopkins University), and numerous NGOs.
About the VMMC Experience Project
The VMMC Experience Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit effort
to document the effects and aftermath of the world’s first mass
surgical campaign. Its aim is to empower the most frequently overlooked
contingent in the African circumcision regime: Africans.
Quick Links
The VMMC Experience Vault. Candid interviews with 90 men and women affected by the circumcision campaign. http://www.vmmcproject.org
Previews. Video previews of the VMMC investigation. http://www.vmmcproject.org/extras/videos
A Slave Has No Power Over His Masters. Prince Hillary
Maloba’s groundbreaking speech on the problem of VMMC and why Africans
must resist it. http://www.vmmcproject.org/about-us
Media Contact: Max Fish max.fish@vmmcproject.org
Ugandans and Kenyans are available for interview.
