November 18, 2016

Pakistan’s Children of a Lesser God!

located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

The social media in Pakistan has been gripped by a rather disturbing video of a man flogging mercilessly a transgender woman. The video showed a man pinning the transgender woman face down on a bed with his foot and beating her bare buttocks with a belt as a number of other men and transgender women looked on.

This brazen and inhuman act that failed to attract the attention of the high ranking officials in the country has once again exposed how unwanted this segment of the society is here. The incident took place in the country’s biggest Punjab province where a large population of the transgender community lives.

Transgender community in Pakistan has long been confined to two professions, sex work and begging.

Few weeks before this latest incident, another transgender woman in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was critically injured after being shot multiple times for allegedly resisting sexual advances of a group of armed men who barged in to her house. Also this year, a young transgender Ali Shah succumbed to injuries in a hospital as doctors wasted the critical time pondering over whether to treat Ali Shah in the male or female ward.

Shah was shot eight bullets by a man. Her friends at the Trans Action Alliance recall that while Ali Shah was heavily bleeding and fighting for survival, the medical staff were asking her questions like how much she charged for dance and ‘other services’.

In the latest case of flogging, Julia; the victim claimed there are group of men in almost every city in Pakistan who target this persecuted minority of transgender people, force them to pay extortion and sex slavery. In a video message on the facebook, Julia can be seen visibly shaken while asking for help. “Are we children of a lesser God?" she asks.

Now, this goes without saying that if Pakistan wants to improve its image and make a mark globally as a nation of dignity, it needs to safeguard the basic rights of every segment of its society without any discrimination. Islamabad government has taken some encouraging steps in this regard for example granting transgender people with the identity cards after decades of denial, and some legislations at the provincial level for the welfare of this marginalized community, but tolerating such inhuman acts would only aggravate their plight.