When Leyla Hussein began campaigning against female genital mutilation (FGM) a decade ago, it provoked a violent reaction from some of her fellow British Somalis. The threats against her grew so severe that she was forced to move home several times, and was issued with a panic alarm.
“I was one of the first people who started saying, ‘stop painting FGM as a cultural practice, call it what it is: it’s child abuse,’ and that really painted me as a girl who’d betrayed her people,” she says.
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