Transgender travails

Being a transgender person anywhere in the world is never easy and in a country like Pakistan, where the rights of minorities are either absent, ignored or abused, life for transgenders is one of struggle upon struggle. Scarcely a day goes by without a report of transgenders involved in a dispute. On November 8, in Haripur, five transgenders accused the police of assaulting them and detaining them unlawfully. The police contended that they were ‘spreading obscenity’. The magistrate in front of whom they were arraigned the next morning disagreed with the police, and said they had committed no crime and let them go. In Peshawar on October 22, there was a clash between a colony of eunuchs and local residents. The eunuch colony reportedly was decades old. They went to report the attack on them and despite filing an FIR, the police allegedly beat them.

The most recent story concerning transgenders and discriminatory or abusive practices concerns two such siblings who were evicted from their home by their brothers, who claimed that they were an embarrassment to the family. The brothers were attempting to deprive the pair of their share of inherited property — it must be remembered that the Supreme Court in 2012 gave a ruling that established inheritance rights for transgenders. Ownership of land and property in Sheikhupura had transferred to four brothers and five sisters on the death of their father in August 2012. He was already in conflict with his two transgender children and wrote them out of his will, but legal advice is that they cannot be deprived of their share in the inheritance even if it is counter to the wishes of their father. It will now be up to a court to resolve the matter one way or another. Meanwhile, the two siblings are homeless as the other family members refuse to share a house with them. Their contention is that they are being punished for something that is not their fault — they were born this way, a contention hard to disavow.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2013.

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