SCBA regrets ‘misinterpretation’ of transgender bill

The recently passed Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act by the NA, was enacted in 2018

ISLAMABAD:

Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Ahsan Bhoon on Saturday regretted that each and every school of thought in the country was interpreting the Transgender Rights Act through its own lens, urging that it should be seen and understood for what it is.

Speaking to the media, the SCBA president said that if a citizen did not consider himself to be “sexually healthy”, they were entitled to seek treatment and emphasised that this was their right.

“Our assembly cannot pass an immoral bill and the law should be seen as it stands,” he stressed.

Ahsan Bhoon recalled that the Chief Justice of Pakistan had ordered the issuance of separate identity cards for the people of the transgender community and termed it “a good move for a healthy society”.

The recently passed Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act by the National Assembly, was enacted in 2018. The law allows transgender persons equal rights to education, basic health facilities, writing their transgender identity on their identity cards and passports, besides the right to vote and contest elections.

However, some religious parties are of the opinion that this bill is actually an attempt to give legal protection to homosexuality in the country.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has even challenged the law in the Federal Shariat Court (FSC).

Amid criticism of the law by the religious parties, which perceive it as an attempt to give legal protection to homosexuality, transgender people say that the 2018 act neither mentions any kind of sex change nor did it allows ‘unnatural’ sex.

Meanwhile, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar has defended the rights bill, saying that transgender people were also human beings and their due rights must be granted to them as per law.

Tarar said that transgender people were also human beings and it was the responsibility of the state to give them their fundamental rights. He added that amendments had been proposed to the Transgender Act, which should be encouraged.

“Under the bill, discriminatory treatment of transgender people has been banned. It has been ensured that they get a share in the property in accordance with Sharia,” he said, adding however that any law could have loopholes.

“In 2018, this law came to parliament through a private member's bill. It was not the bill of the government at that time. Two years have passed since the approval of the bill and now some complaints surfaced,” Tarar said.