To be transgender in heteropatriarchal Pakistan means living one’s life in secrecy, ridiculed and mocked at every juncture and even erased from the official record. Abandoned by their own families and relegated to jobs such as dancing and sex work, the trans community continues to be at a heightened risk of getting murdered simply for doing their job. The latest incident involves Mishi from Nasratkhel who was killed when her vehicle was ambushed by her own brother. Two of her colleagues were also injured during the ambush. But filing criminal charges is out of the question especially when law enforcement simply doesn’t care enough to probe further.
In theory, Pakistan has progressive laws that protect transgender rights. But the community, known colloquially as the khwaja sira, was criminalised by the British under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 and continues to be treated that way despite legal protections on paper. Their marginalisation is intimately tied to a colonial legacy that sought to erase gender-diverse identities which interfered with their own conception of masculinity.
Two years ago, trans rights activist Nayyab Ali was attacked in her home by two men who tortured her relentlessly for hours. It wasn’t until 27 members of the European Parliament wrote to the Pakistani government that the police filed a criminal report, a rare occurrence that does not represent the majority of these cases. The situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is particularly grim-when a trans woman called Nazo was stabbed to death in 2018, activists revealed that she was the 62nd trans person murdered in the province since 2015.
Although the 2018 Transgender Rights Protection Act is a federal law, large areas of policy are administered by provincial authorities who do not have their own version of the law, making it exceedingly difficult for trans people to seek legal recourse in the event of a crime. Pakistan must realize that it has the opportunity to be a pathbreaker and set the groundwork for what trans rights should look like elsewhere in the world. A law means very little if it is not enforced. *
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