Fauziya Kassindja (born 1977,

Kpalimé Kpalimé is a city in the Plateaux Region of Togo, 120 km north of Lomé and 15 km from the border with Ghana. It is the administrative capital of Kloto Prefecture. Kpalimé has a population of 75,084, making it the fourth-biggest to ...

Togo Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...

), also known as Fauzia Kasinga, is the author of ''Do They Hear You When You Cry?'' an autobiographical story of her refusal to submit to kakia, the Togo ritual of female genital mutilation, and a

forced marriage Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will. A marriage can also become a forced marriage even if both parties enter with full consent if one or both are later force ...

. She fled Togo and traveled first to Germany, where she obtained a fake passport, and then to the United States where she immediately informed immigration officials that her documents were false and requested asylum. She was detained by the

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that administers the country's naturalization and immigration system. It is a successor to the Immigration and Naturalizati ...

and imprisoned. Fauziya's family hired a law student, Layli Miller Bashir, to advocate for her asylum, who in turn enlisted the help of Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and then acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic. Fauziya was granted asylum on 13 June 1996, in the landmark decision

Matter of Kasinga The Matter of Kasinga was a legal case decided in June 1996 involving Fauziya Kassindja (surname also spelled as Kasinga), a Togolese teenager seeking asylum in the United States in order to escape a tribal practice of female genital mutilation ( ...

. In 2002, Kassindja contributed an essay called ''Remaining Whole While Behind Bars'' to the book '' That Takes Ovaries!: Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts'' (Three Rivers Press, 2002). She lives in

Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of downtown Washington, D.C. In 2020, the population was 159,467. ...

References

Living people 1977 births 21st-century Togolese writers 21st-century Togolese women writers Togolese non-fiction writers 21st-century non-fiction writers People from Kpalimé Togolese emigrants to the United States Violence against women in Togo {{Togo-writer-stub