From Prokeyala.com
New Deli, India
July 5, 2009
"We are not criminals, never were," a member of the capital's abused and suppressed transgender community said as the group erupted in joy after hearing of the Delhi High Court's decision to decriminalize consensual sex between consenting adults.
"I am so happy! I have been celebrating the court's judgment since Thursday. I participated at the gay parade at Connaught Place. Then I went to Nabi Karim (in central Delhi) where many kinnars (eunuchs) live and we danced all night!" an overjoyed Mangala told IANS.
"The time has come for us to come out in the open and be who we are and we won't be considered criminals," said Mangala, a peer-outreach officer with the NGO Sahara's transgender project.
For long this community has been complaining of being falsely implicated in criminal cases and being harassed by the police.
"We joked that we can openly engage in sex and the police can't catch us because if they do so we can always say that what we are doing is no crime and we have the court's consent," stated a eunuch from Seelampur, northeast Delhi, on condition of anonymity.
The Delhi High Court ruled Thursday that sex among consenting adults of the same sex was no crime, triggering celebrations among gay activists and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.
The court repealed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), emphasizing that the constitution guaranteed homosexuals equal rights as other citizens. The bench also said the judgment would hold till parliament amended the law.
The judgment did lead to some confusion, however, especially among those eunuchs who are semi-literate or illiterate.
"There are some vague notions in the community - many are uneducated and were pleased with what they saw in the headlines, not going into the details. They assumed it allowed 'kinnar' marriages and began celebrating. But that is not the case," said Malti Mehra, head of the transgender community project for Sahara.
Prema, another eunuch from Seelampur, said that the judgment had several members of the community in doubt. "I am overjoyed - but you can expect angry voices from many. It is causing a good deal of ruckus." According to Prema, many are skeptical about the judgment because "eunuchs living a life of secrecy may get encouraged to come out in the open, but it can strain the relationships between them and their parents, who could snap all ties. Losing your family is what is feared most."
"Being a part of the kinnar community is looked down upon in Indian society - they live in shoddy conditions, abused and suppressed - so their movement for freedom has a long way to go," Mehra explained.
Although there is no official data about the number of eunuchs in India, it is estimated to be 1.2 million. Their traditional role in society has been of dancers, prostitutes and beggars.
Eunuchs want policies that acknowledge their existence, like giving them an official gender status of the third sex, and health checks in hospitals where they are often denied entry. They also want the same job opportunities as everyone else.
Asked whether the judgment would help the AIDS awareness programmes of Sahara, Mehra said: "It's too early to comment; let's see what the government decides."
A group of eunuchs had moved the Supreme Court Jan 20, seeking their rights to education, social and political rehabilitation. The petition filed by Sonam Singh, a eunuch from Ajmer, sought direction to the union government to constitute a National Kinnar Ayog or commission on the lines of those for dalits and tribals.
In February, the apex court dismissed the plea and directed Singh to approach the home ministry, where the matter is 'under consideration'. (Shweta Srinivasan can be contacted at shweta.s@ians.in)
Huffington Post
Pakistan
August 19, 2009
It probably wasn't the first time that someone had organized an Independence Day cricket match in Pakistan. But it almost certainly was the first time that such a match occurred between a team of professional cricket players and a team of transgendered Pakistanis. As the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported, the transgendered team won.
Known as hijras, transgendered Pakistanis and Indians have historically lived in their own communities and within their own cultural contexts. The word hijra combines a range of sexual identities -- gay cross dressers, hermaphrodites -- who identify as female, and male-to-female transgendered individuals. In Indian and Pakistani English, words like "eunuch" and "transvestite" are often used in place of the word hijra.
Of course, it goes without saying that many Pakistani hijras, like their Indian counterparts, live challenging lives of discrimination and social stigma. That is why it was such positive news when the Pakistani Supreme Court recently ruled that transgendered citizens cannot be discriminated against in Pakistani government welfare programs. The Court also directed the government to take specific steps to ensure their well-being.
In the words of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, "Eunuchs are also the citizens of Pakistan and should be given basic fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution."
Of course, even the most sophisticated consumers of American media are unlikely to be aware of such developments. Why? Because American media outlets didn't report on them. For American reporters and editors, Pakistan only exists in the context of security concerns: the Taliban, terrorism, fundamentalist Islam, and the war in Afghanistan.
Outside of this context, there is no Pakistan.
By comparison, consider how the U.S. media reported on related developments in India. When the Delhi High Court threw out an Indian law banning gay sex, American newspapers trumpeted the news. As the New York Times reported, "In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi's highest court decriminalized homosexuality. " Plenty of other U.S. media outlets sounded off too.
New Deli, India
July 5, 2009
"We are not criminals, never were," a member of the capital's abused and suppressed transgender community said as the group erupted in joy after hearing of the Delhi High Court's decision to decriminalize consensual sex between consenting adults.
"I am so happy! I have been celebrating the court's judgment since Thursday. I participated at the gay parade at Connaught Place. Then I went to Nabi Karim (in central Delhi) where many kinnars (eunuchs) live and we danced all night!" an overjoyed Mangala told IANS.
"The time has come for us to come out in the open and be who we are and we won't be considered criminals," said Mangala, a peer-outreach officer with the NGO Sahara's transgender project.
For long this community has been complaining of being falsely implicated in criminal cases and being harassed by the police.
"We joked that we can openly engage in sex and the police can't catch us because if they do so we can always say that what we are doing is no crime and we have the court's consent," stated a eunuch from Seelampur, northeast Delhi, on condition of anonymity.
The Delhi High Court ruled Thursday that sex among consenting adults of the same sex was no crime, triggering celebrations among gay activists and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.
The court repealed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), emphasizing that the constitution guaranteed homosexuals equal rights as other citizens. The bench also said the judgment would hold till parliament amended the law.
The judgment did lead to some confusion, however, especially among those eunuchs who are semi-literate or illiterate.
"There are some vague notions in the community - many are uneducated and were pleased with what they saw in the headlines, not going into the details. They assumed it allowed 'kinnar' marriages and began celebrating. But that is not the case," said Malti Mehra, head of the transgender community project for Sahara.
Prema, another eunuch from Seelampur, said that the judgment had several members of the community in doubt. "I am overjoyed - but you can expect angry voices from many. It is causing a good deal of ruckus." According to Prema, many are skeptical about the judgment because "eunuchs living a life of secrecy may get encouraged to come out in the open, but it can strain the relationships between them and their parents, who could snap all ties. Losing your family is what is feared most."
"Being a part of the kinnar community is looked down upon in Indian society - they live in shoddy conditions, abused and suppressed - so their movement for freedom has a long way to go," Mehra explained.
Although there is no official data about the number of eunuchs in India, it is estimated to be 1.2 million. Their traditional role in society has been of dancers, prostitutes and beggars.
Eunuchs want policies that acknowledge their existence, like giving them an official gender status of the third sex, and health checks in hospitals where they are often denied entry. They also want the same job opportunities as everyone else.
Asked whether the judgment would help the AIDS awareness programmes of Sahara, Mehra said: "It's too early to comment; let's see what the government decides."
A group of eunuchs had moved the Supreme Court Jan 20, seeking their rights to education, social and political rehabilitation. The petition filed by Sonam Singh, a eunuch from Ajmer, sought direction to the union government to constitute a National Kinnar Ayog or commission on the lines of those for dalits and tribals.
In February, the apex court dismissed the plea and directed Singh to approach the home ministry, where the matter is 'under consideration'. (Shweta Srinivasan can be contacted at shweta.s@ians.in)
Huffington Post
Pakistan
August 19, 2009
It probably wasn't the first time that someone had organized an Independence Day cricket match in Pakistan. But it almost certainly was the first time that such a match occurred between a team of professional cricket players and a team of transgendered Pakistanis. As the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported, the transgendered team won.
Known as hijras, transgendered Pakistanis and Indians have historically lived in their own communities and within their own cultural contexts. The word hijra combines a range of sexual identities -- gay cross dressers, hermaphrodites -- who identify as female, and male-to-female transgendered individuals. In Indian and Pakistani English, words like "eunuch" and "transvestite" are often used in place of the word hijra.
Of course, it goes without saying that many Pakistani hijras, like their Indian counterparts, live challenging lives of discrimination and social stigma. That is why it was such positive news when the Pakistani Supreme Court recently ruled that transgendered citizens cannot be discriminated against in Pakistani government welfare programs. The Court also directed the government to take specific steps to ensure their well-being.
In the words of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, "Eunuchs are also the citizens of Pakistan and should be given basic fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution."
Of course, even the most sophisticated consumers of American media are unlikely to be aware of such developments. Why? Because American media outlets didn't report on them. For American reporters and editors, Pakistan only exists in the context of security concerns: the Taliban, terrorism, fundamentalist Islam, and the war in Afghanistan.
Outside of this context, there is no Pakistan.
By comparison, consider how the U.S. media reported on related developments in India. When the Delhi High Court threw out an Indian law banning gay sex, American newspapers trumpeted the news. As the New York Times reported, "In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi's highest court decriminalized homosexuality. " Plenty of other U.S. media outlets sounded off too.
Taken on its own, this focus is a good thing. The expansion of equality deserves to be reported on, whether one is writing about the Indian Supreme Court's decision in 2009, or the U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that ruled similar bans unconstitutional across the U.S.
But the heavy U.S. coverage of the Indian Supreme Court's decision also fits into a pre-existing Western narrative of India. As the story goes, India is a growing democracy and a rising economic power. In that context, the story of the expansion of Indian equality easily resonates in the American mind. Not only is the U.S. simultaneously addressing similar challenges faced by gay and lesbian Americans, but there is a strong underlying belief that democracies perfect themselves over time through an expansion of liberty across society.
Unfortunately, Pakistan's story of expanding equality for transgendered citizens doesn't quite fit the pre-written American narrative. After all, Pakistan was supposed to be on the verge of becoming a "failed Islamic state." How can the same country possibly have a Supreme Court that bars discrimination against a sexual minority?
The story of the Pakistani Supreme Court decision poses other challenges to the dominant narrative as well. Dawn identified the individual who brought forward the claim on behalf of transgendered Pakistanis as Dr Mohammad Aslam Khaki, an Islamic jurist. As reported in Pakistan's The News International, Dr Khaki "told the court that eunuchs were discriminated [against] everywhere, including hospitals, schools and colleges," and that "eunuchs should be provided with an opportunity to interact with other segments of society including journalists, lawyers, ulema and the like."
You can imagine the cognitive fit that such a news story might induce in the mainstream U.S. media. How can an Islamic jurist advocate for transgender communities? Why weren't there Pakistani riots when the decision came down?
To make things even more interesting, it is worth pointing out that the Chief Justice who issued the Supreme Court ruling isn't some isolated bureaucrat disliked by mainstream Pakistani society. No, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is actually a highly popular judge who was once removed from power by the U.S.-backed military dictator Pervez Musharraf. He was subsequently put back in office by a massive movement of hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who marched on the capital of Islamabad twice.
While the Bush Administration was pumping billions of U.S. tax dollars into Musharraf's regime, Musharraf worked hard to protect his reign by dismantling the rule of law at home. Independent courts have a way of interfering with dictators' designs, so Musharraf replaced Chief Justice Chaudhry and his peers with more "compliant" judges. It took the protests of two "Long Marches" to bring the real Chief Justice back to the Pakistani Supreme Court.
None of this, of course, fits within the dominant U.S. narrative on Pakistan. First of all, transgender equality in Pakistan isn't a security issue. Second, Muslim jurists and courts aren't expected to advocate for the rights of sexual minorities. Third, it carries the subtle implication that U.S. support for Musharraf actually delayed the pursuit of equality for an aggrieved community.
No wonder the mainstream U.S. media couldn't find space for this story. It just doesn't fit. This is part of HuffPost's Spotlight On Pakistan.
And not to be left out, another country, which is a neighbor of Pakistan and India, but still its own republic, Bangladesh, just last December 2008, also gave eunuchs their right to vote:
Bangladesh Eunuchs to Vote in First Elections
Agence France-Presse
December 28, 2008
December 28, 2008
Among the millions of new voters in Monday's Bangladeshi elections will be some 100,000 hijras -- cross-dressing, pre- and post-operative transsexuals -- allowed to cast ballots for the first time. The male-to-female transsexuals are among 32 percent of the impoverished nation's 81 million voters for whom participating in the elections, the first since 2001, will be a new experience. Hijra social worker Joya Shikder, herself a transsexual, said the move spelled a positive change for the conservative Muslim country. "We've always been overlooked in previous elections," Shikder said. "It's exciting to be given this recognition but the authorities have stopped short of acknowledging us as a third gender."
The move to give hijras the vote has been applauded by human rights activists but has caused a headache for Election Commission officials who create separate lines for male and female voters at every polling booth. "You just cannot just class us into men and women by looking at our faces, bodies and expressions," Shikder said.
Election Commission spokesman S.M. Asaduzzaman said officials were still trying to figure out exactly how hijras would cast their votes on Monday.
"It's a difficult one for us. We have only two queues, one for men and another for women," he said. "We thought long and hard about it but eventually decided that hijras must go to the line that we think suits them best. The more feminine ones will be in the ladies' line while the ones who seem more manly will be in with the men."Monday's election will end a two-year rule by an army-backed government. The current regime has pushed through electoral reform during its tenure, including creating a photo identification voter list which has eliminated some 12.7 million fake "ghost" voters.
Commentators say the election will be the fairest in the notoriously corrupt, impoverished South Asian nation. Around 200,000 observers, including 2,500 from overseas, will be watching Monday's vote. Among those who will also be voting for the first time are more than 40,000 Urdu-speaking Muslims who migrated to Bangladesh from the majority-Hindu Indian state of Bihar after the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 but before Bangladesh -- then East Pakistan -- gained independence in 1971.A Bangladesh court ruled in May that the Biharis, long considered refugees but never welcomed by either India or Pakistan, were full-fledged citizens.
Tens of thousands of floating gypsies and more than 50,000 prisoners have also been given voting rights for the first time in this election.
Congratulations, Bangladesh!!!
The News
Editor Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD
ISLAMABAD
The Supreme Court on Monday directed the federal and provincial governments to provide protection and free of cost health and education facilities to the eunuchs. A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and comprising Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmad and Justice Ghulam Rabbani, heard a petition filed by Dr Aslam Khaki advocate against the social injustice committed to the transgender individuals. The advocates general of all the four provinces and Deputy Attorney General Shah Khawar appeared before the court and presented reports of the respective social welfare departments.
The Punjab social welfare department reported it had completed registration of eunuchs, stating there were 2,167 transgender individuals in the province. The NWFP social welfare departments’ report stated a survey had been carried out in 17 districts of the province, and 324 eunuchs had been registered. The court directed other provinces to complete the registration process till next hearing of the case. The court ordered the federal and provincial governments to appoint a focal person on district and Tehsil level to coordinate with the representatives of eunuchs to ensure their security and prevent registration of false cases against them.
The governments were also directed to provide free of cost education and health facilities, especially treatment of fatal diseases like HIV AIDS, Hepatitis and Tuberculosis etc.
The governments were also asked to furnish reports on the implementation of the court’s orders to the Supreme Court registrar. The apex court ordered the provinces to exchange their reports containing suggestions for the welfare of the eunuchs with one another and take measures for their welfare according to the said reports including the suggestions forwarded by the petitioner. Advocate Aslam Khaki told the court that eunuchs were discriminated everywhere, including hospitals, schools and colleges and the like.
The chief justice observed that the Constitution has provided equal rights to all the citizens. He said that being transgender is a kind of disability and the society should accept tinder Aslam Khaki suggested that eunuchs should be provided with an opportunity to interact with other segments of society including journalists, lawyers, ulema and the like and suggested that the chief justice should give them a reception to honour them.
The chief justice observed that the Court had taken up case for their welfare and was honouring them. The case was adjourned till first week of November while the federal and provincial governments were directed to implement the courts’ orders during the said period and submit report to the SC registrar.
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