Transgender activists staged a protest outside the Karachi Press Club on Saturday, demanding of the Sindh government to provide their community with protection and justice. Gender Interactive Alliance executive director Bindiya Rana led the demonstration, which was attended by transgender persons, human and women rights activists among other people from different walks of life.
The demonstration was held by Aurat March and Sindh Moorat March against a mob attack on transgender persons Shehzadi Rao, who is also a Karachi Metropolitan Corporation council member on a reserved seat for the transgender people on the Pakistan Peoples Party ticket.
Rana condemned violence against several transgender persons by a mob in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, a tragic incident which happened recently. She said the around 50 to 60 men tortured six transgender persons and extended death threats to them. She accused the police of facilitating the miscreants, saying that instead of registering an FIR against them and taking action, the officers forced the victims to make a compromise with the suspects. Rana added that police without any reason have also started thrashing transgender persons who beg at traffic signals during the holy month of Ramazan. She lamented that despite tall claims of the government to make inclusive policies and systems, transgender persons had no adequate representation in any institution and were treated as third-class citizens.
The GIA head demanded from the Sindh chief minister, governor and inspector general of police to take notice of violence against transgender persons and provide them with justice. She added that the government and its institutions should also provide relief to the downtrodden and underprivileged segments of society, including transgender persons and religious minorities, during this month to alleviate their suffering.
Protest leaders said that just 10 days after they marched on Karachi’s streets in the Aurat March on March 8 along with their khwajasira siblings with their slogan for azaadi, a mob attacked a group of transgender women in Gulistan-e-Jauhar at around midnight. “We will burn you all,” the transgender people present there were told as they tried to make it out alive. In the process, men from within the mob also physically and sexually assaulted some of them. The Aurat March representatives said the transgender people be given azaadi from this dehumanization, which has worsened by over 200 percent due to a hate campaign launched nearly two years ago.
The mob attack in question was rooted in an intense hatred against transgender people —a hatred that has been imported from the West and is being regurgitated by the conservative elites in Pakistan in order to keep their undue power intact. Aurat March representative Zoha Alvis said that one should not forget that the worst sufferers in this environment of hate are people whose existence precedes the existence of Pakistan itself: South Asia’s indigenous khwajasira community. “We believe that transphobia is the highest form of misogyny and the hatred being directed towards the trans community is part of a larger patriarchal system of violence on our bodies, which will add to the oppression of cisgender women as well,” she said.
In the protest, they demanded transphobic speech be considered as hate speech under the law. They demanded that the Sindh Police establish Tahaffuz centres across Sindh for transgender people and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 be upheld in its original form urgently. They protesters said that the perpetrators of the mob and the person who beat up a trans woman that day should issue a public apology to the trans community, and the police safety for community members in the area.
