A small victory for Pakistan’s transgenders

Mark Magnier, LA Times

Published 03/03/2010

Reporting from Rawalpindi, Pakistan — Wearing a red knit bonnet, matching lipstick and a shawl over her large shoulders and muscular forearms, Nanni gently sought to clear up some confusion as the call to prayer sounded from a nearby mosque.

“I’m a ’she-male,’ ” said Nanni, a kind of den mother for a dozen or so fellow hijra, or transgender people, in a rundown neighborhood of Rawalpindi. “We all are.”

Sharing two small rooms halfway along a dark dirt alley and up a steep flight of steps, Nanni’s family is one made, not born: a community of outcasts forced together after their families abandoned them, their indeterminate sex unnerving this patriarchal society — especially the ascendant Pakistani Taliban.

“We are God’s creatures,” Nanni said. “Even if many people don’t accept us, we feel the same here in the den as if we are of the same blood. We do everything to take care of one another.”

Dominating one room was a rough-hewn double bed that the dozen or so hijra, some more than 6 feet tall, use in shifts. The walls were covered with pictures of hijra beauties of the Mughal era that ended more than a century ago, a time when transgender people were not only accepted but also enjoyed significant power and prestige.

Asked whether the hijra family members were all congenital eunuchs and hermaphrodites, Nanni, 35, insisted that they were all born that way. To prove the point, she ordered Akri, a hermaphrodite whose broad face was softened by mascara and a scarf, to drop her traditional outfit and show her private parts.

Hijra have long been stigmatized and subject to discrimination and abuse in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, with its rigorously defined roles for men and women. But in a landmark decision in December, the Supreme Court ordered that they be protected from police harassment, be eligible for a separate gender category on ID cards and be recognized under inheritance laws.

“We need proper rights,” said Noor, a 21-year-old member of Nanni’s household. “No one listens to our concerns.”

Although nascent legal status is a first step, social acceptance is likely to take far longer. Noor and the others said police officers and residents often beat, harass, rob and sexually abuse them.

“You get used to it,” said Nanni, who as the guru, or head of the hijra family, is combination parent, boss and enforcer. “It only shows how stupid their mentality is.”

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Pakistan SC orders equal benefits for transvestites

By Nasir Iqbal
Wednesday, 15 Jul, 2009 | 09:00 AM PST |
SOURCE:  Dawn

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ordered that transvestites, being equal citizens of Pakistan, should also benefit from the federal and provincial governments’ financial support schemes such as the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

‘They are citizens of Pakistan and enjoy the same protection guaranteed under Article four (rights of individuals to be dealt with in accordance of law) and Article nine (security of person) of the Constitution,’ ruled a three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Muhammad Sair Ali and Justice Jawwad S Khawaja on Tuesday.

The bench had taken up the petition seeking establishment of a commission to emancipate effeminate men ostracised by the society for no fault of theirs.

Islamic jurist Dr Mohammad Aslam Khaki, who researched on the conditions of the ignominious merrymakers and discovered them to be the most oppressed and deprived segment of the society and subjected to humiliation and molestation, had filed the petition for the welfare of the transvestites left by the society to live by begging, dancing and prostitution.

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Pakistan’s lone gay writer rests pen, says sorry

5 Jul 2009, 1403 hrs IST, PTI
Source:  Times of India

ISLAMABAD: Gay community in India may be celebrating the Delhi High Court’s landmark ruling that decriminalized homosexuality, the lone Pakistani who blogs about gay travails has decided to stop writing.

“Not in Pakistan. I cannot. Sorry,” Jalaluddin, who blogs at Tuzk-e-Jalali, wrote in his latest and perhaps last post on June 28.

“I guess all of you guys will have to get used to the fact that I will, from now on, be blogging very irregularly, as in once a quarter or something.”

Jalal describes himself as a “20-something sarcastic, psychotic, socialist, homosexual blogger from Karachi” who was educated as an engineer, but works as a banker and dreams of being a traveler and writer.

“For all the actions where I have come out of the closet to my family and friends does not mean that I am ready to do it officially. So, for now, I am going to have the following goals in life, I want to learn how to speak French and Farsi (Persian) and I want to learn horse riding, sword fighting, archery and shooting,” he wrote.

“One of the reasons for not blogging for the past three months would be the fear elicited by the fact that my blog has been quoted. The closet door is being banged at very hard. I would have to request you people to at least not try to knock on the closet door,” he wrote.

Let’s talk about sex, and rights, Pakistan

A new magazine aims to spark a debate about sexuality in the Muslim country.

Andrew Buncombe reports from Lahore
Friday, 3 April
SOURCE:  The Independent

Pakistan’s first magazine about sexuality, Chay, is just three issues old yet already it is creating ripples within this conservative, buttoned-down and overwhelmingly Muslim society. And if those behind the new publication, currently only available online, fulfil their dream of producing a print edition, then those ripples may even turn to waves.

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Karan Johar’s Dostana Banned in Pakistan

UPDATE:  The ban on Dostana was recently lifted.
See updated news further up on this page.

AMIR MIR; SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2008; (Source:  DNAIndia.com)

Objectionable homosexuality in film is punishable with death across the border

ISLAMABAD: The Lahore high court has banned the screening of Bollywood flick Dostana across Pakistan, saying it has some highly objectionable “gay content”.

A single bench of the high court passed the order on Friday on a writ petition filed by Khuram Khan. The court held that the movie propagates homosexuality, which is not only illegal in Islamic Republic of Pakistan but also considered a crime punishable by whipping, imprisonment, or even death.

The petitioner maintained that Dostana promotes gay marriage which is prohibited in Islam and all other religions. Gay marriage is an atrocious and obscene act, more likely to be performed by someone of unsound nature, the petitioner said. Islam says a Muslim should neither commit obscene acts nor indulge in their propagation, he added. “Allah tells us in the Qur’an that He created everything in pairs.”

The petitioner then argued that Karan Johar’s Dostana highlights the gay theme and the Pakistan Film Censor Board should not allow its screening, as being sought by the film’s distributor in Pakistan.

The Lahore high court subsequently directed the chairman of Pakistan Film Censor Board not to allow screening of the film and furnish the transcript of Dostana before the court at the next hearing of the case.