The life of a Pakistani transgender is lonely since she is by her family and mocked by their society.
Alisha was just 23 years old when she was shot five times last month, allegedly by a boyfriend who has been arrested. She died of her wounds three days later. Her friends say she was neglected by doctors and medical professionals who taunted her, rather than treated her, and that three hours passed before Alisha went into surgery after arriving at the hospital.
As she lay bleeding, the hospital’s health workers crowded around her, making jokes and ridiculing her, said her friend Paro, herself transgender.
“I shouted: ‘She is not dancing. She is dying. For God and the Prophet’s sake leave her alone, let her breathe,” Paro recalled, her voice rising as she remembered pushing the crowd away.
Farzana, another friend, said the hospital shuffled Alisha from ward to ward. First they sent her to the male ward, but the other patients and family members ordered her out. She was shunted then to the female ward, but she wasn’t welcome there either, said Farzana, who heads an organization devoted to fighting for the rights of transgender people in Pakistan’s conservative northwest.
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As outcasts, Pakistan’s transgender people are often forced into begging, dancing and even prostitution to earn money. They also live in fear of attacks, causing most to either change their names or use only one name to give them anonymity in their society. Paro and Farzana have both changed their names, as had Alisha, abandoning their male names with their gender.
The Supreme Court has designated transgender people as a third gender, which under law should provide them protection but in practice, Kamran Arif, vice president of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said transgender people bear the brunt of some of the worst discrimination. They are sexually abused, assaulted and even murdered.
So far this year in northwestern Pakistan alone, there have been five attacks against transgender people. According to members of the community, 45 have been killed in the last two years in KPK.
Paro and Farzana mourn Alisha, and seek justice for her death. The hospital has ordered an inquiry; the hospital administrator named Dr. Hamid Saeed Haq promised to punish the culprits, acknowledging in an interview that it seems mistakes were made. But he neither identified the mistakes nor assigned blame.
In recent years and in several areas of the country, transgender people have begun to organize, occasionally demonstrating despite violent responses. Paro and Farzana both want to be recognized as women but say that’s not possible in Pakistan.