Govt should take actions to end violence against vulnerable communities, particularly those of the transgender persons
ISLAMABAD: On April 6, a group of armed men abducted and gang-raped a transgender person after killing two others. This incident took place in Swabi district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The men waited in a field for a group of transgender persons who were returning from a music and dance show at a wedding ceremony. The men tried to abduct the victims and opened fire at them when they refused to cooperate. As a result, one transgender and one drummer were killed on the spot, while another was wounded. The men then abducted one transgender, who was kept hostage for hours and was gang-raped.
This is not the first time a transgender person has been raped. Traditionally known for their music and dance skills, transgender people in Pakistan continue to face harassment and hate crimes at the hands of members of the public as well as law enforcement agencies. The police are mostly reluctant to register the First Information Reports (FIRs) in their cases. However, in the Swabi incident, the police have managed to take action by arresting the culprits involved in the kidnapping and murder. This just goes to show that the police are capable of helping the transgender community and can reduce the occurrence of such incidents only if they are willing to do so.
In April 2013, Pakistan saw a new ray of hope, as transgender candidates filed in electoral nomination papers from different constituencies, in different parts of the country. Not only were they given the right to vote, the Supreme Court also gave them the right to have National Identity Cards, a legal share in their family’s inheritance, as well as a reserved two per cent quota of jobs in all sectors. In order to have an enabling environment, where legal and administrative actions are taken against such criminal acts and human rights violations, we need not only to condemn such incidents verbally, but also take actions against them.
We, as a women-led and rights-based organisation, believe that this is the right time to demand that the government and the law-enforcement agencies take serious actions to end violence against vulnerable communities, particularly those of the transgender persons.
Mir Anwar Shahzad
Society for Sustainable Development
Published in The Express Tribune, April 11th, 2015.
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