Plight of the third

While we are quick to point out how great we are, we continue to mistreat the weak such as transgender persons

A small news story that caught my eye was that of the death of Amna and Meeno in Saudi Arabia. The issue was also raised by Noman Ansari, a leading blogger, who gave some more details.

From the scant details revealed, Amna, a 35-year-old from the Mingora part of Swat and 26-year-old Meeno from Peshawar were killed in Saudi Arabia in police custody. It is believed that their crime was that they were transgenders, who made the mistake of dressing up as women and entering the Holy Land despite a ban on their entry.

Details of the deaths of Amna and Meeno are not easily available. But one can imagine the terror and torture they may have faced at the hands of the Saudi law enforcement authorities who have little patience with Pakistanis anyway.

Needless to say, our embassy in Saudi Arabia did nothing. Possibly our ambassador’s job in the Kingdom extends to looking after the business interests of the PM and his family and nothing else. And of course, saving the likes of Zaid Hamid, who is seen by some quarters as an asset.

In Pakistan, members of the transgender community have little hope of justice or respect either. Theirs seems to be a losing battle.

We are told that members of the community have been given the right to a National Identity Card and to vote. But in practice, this is next to impossible. The forward-looking judgment of our courts has not been followed through by our short-sighted bureaucracy.

Transgenders in Pakistan have been reduced to the subject of jokes and ridicule. As a community, the only profession they can make a living from is usually the oldest profession in the world. They are not given opportunities in any other field.

It was an enterprising officer in one of the Cantonment Boards in Karachi who some years back hired some members of the community - to identify and shame tax-evaders into paying their taxes. It was a successful drive but the people who were earlier tasked to do this work - and who could not do it, protested and sabotaged the initiative.

But then again, this wasn’t really a proper job. In fact, the state of Pakistan has been unable to give members of transgender community a proper place in society.

One of the biggest problems is the mindset that many Pakistanis have with regards to members of the transgender community. They are seen as deviants: to be shunned or ridiculed.

Others, especially women, ascribe magical powers to them, and insist that they be doled out alms so that they do not curse any family or person. The problem in all this is that transgenders are not seen as humans - and as such there is no talk of giving them rights like other Pakistanis.

More recently, there has been a rise in violence against transgenders, especially in the KP province. But their attackers remain at large, yet to be arrested let alone punished for their crimes.

Transgender female Alisha who was shot eight times succumbed to her wounds at Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) last year. The 25-year-old’s was the fifth reported case of violence against transgenders in KP in 2016.

A close friend Qamar Naseem told the media that when taking Alisha to the LRH, one of the oldest health facilities in the province, the doctors kept asking the injured Alisha if she danced only and how much she charged whereas the blood laboratory assistant asked them if their blood was HIV positive or not.

Farzana Jan, another member of the community, was almost teary-eyed as she described how she had to run around looking for doctors and finding a suitable ward while people, mostly attendants with admitted patients, chased her and teased her instead of helping her in the hour of need.

The male and female wards were also reluctant to have the injured transgender so the attendants had to admit Alisha to a private room.

Farzana said that people who were either patients or their attendants were continuously ridiculing them and laughing at them when they were going through a tragic incident.

While we are quick to point out how great a nation we are and how good Muslims we have become, we continue to mistreat those who are vulnerable and weak. This seems part of our national character.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2017.

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