‘Afghan transgender’ living illegally in Pakistan: ‘My mother said if you want to live, leave here’
22-year-old Fauzia (pseudonym) takes her yellow and black dress out of the closet, puts on black bracelets on her hands and checks in the mirror to make sure she’s ready for a night out.
After the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, he left the country and took refuge in Pakistan. He was ‘forced to flee Afghanistan for his life’ after a video of him dancing in women’s clothes at a gay party went viral on social media.
Fawzia, from the eastern city of Jalalabad, says, “After escaping from Afghanistan, my family found out that I was transgender and my father told me that now that you have run away from home, never come back.” Anna, the doors of the house are closed on you forever.’
23-year-old Jameela (pseudonym) is another Afghan transgender refugee from Laghman province in eastern Afghanistan. After the Taliban returned to power, he fled Afghanistan and took refuge in Pakistan.
Trans people are members of society who perceive their gender identity as different from the sex they were born with.
‘Impossible’ return to Afghanistan
Jamila has long hair, and whenever her red and yellow scarf falls over her shoulders after slipping off her head, she pulls it back over her head. They are dressed in red, purple and yellow and while speaking they lower their eyes and look at the ground.
Jamila says, ‘When my family saw my dance videos, they realized I was trans, my brothers beat me badly, I was seriously injured, my father even tried to kill me with an axe. But my mother took me by the hand and threw me out of the house and said if you want to live, leave here.’
Fauzia lives with a few members of the Pakistani trans community who are discriminated against, making it almost impossible to get a job. Many people earn money by dancing at parties and weddings. Fawzia says that when she goes to these parties, she also takes them with her to ‘take care of my luggage and bags.’ do the work of
Before 2018, the trans community of Pakistan was deprived of many legal and social rights. These people, often rejected by their families as children and adolescents, have also been denied access to education and health services in the past. Now they have relative rights despite opposition from Sharia court of Pakistan. Trans women who live in gangs, sometimes work as beggars, sometimes dance at a party, or are forced into prostitution.
Fauzia and Jameela, who live with these groups, have a similar status. Fauzia says the life of illegal and undocumented Afghan refugees in Pakistan is “humiliating”.
Risk of arrest and deportation
Pakistan is home to more than 4 million Afghan refugees and refugees, 17 million of whom Islamabad says are illegal, many of whom arrived in the country after the Taliban returned to power.
The Pakistani government launched a campaign in November to deport “illegal immigrants who have no legal right to stay in Pakistan”. But Fauzia and Jameela say that if they are sent back to Afghanistan, they will be killed by the Taliban or their own relatives.
In January 2022, Human Rights Watch and Action International released a report stating that ‘Homosexual, transgender Afghans and those who do not adhere to strict gender norms face an increasingly desperate situation in Afghanistan. are doing and their security and lives are facing serious threats under the rule of the Taliban.’
“Life in Pakistan is definitely difficult but ‘bearable’ and the Pakistani police can arrest them and send them back to Afghanistan at any time,” says Jameela.
Both work as waiters with Pakistani trans people to meet their basic needs like food and shelter.
“If they give me food, I eat, if not, I have to go to prostitution to survive,” he says.
Jamila says she goes to parties once or twice a week and is often harassed when she returns. “It often happens that vagrants even gang-rape me and later threaten to kill me if I report to the police or anyone else,” she says. Can’t pass because I don’t have documents and the police will send me back to Afghanistan, so I have to bear it.’
Fauzia says that she was once arrested by the Pakistani police but was released after paying a heavy price.
“Homosexuality”
“We were going to the party when the police stopped us,” says Fauzia, who is dressed in black and wears a black mask to cover her face as she speaks. They asked us for a birth certificate. Some Pakistani trans people with me showed their documents, but I said that I am from Afghanistan and I don’t have any birth certificate. They took me with them to the police station and I was kept in jail overnight. I begged them many times to let me go, and finally I gave all my money.’
Fawzia and Jameela, who both look younger than their actual ages, say they started dancing in women’s clothes when they were 15 or 16 and were often sexually abused by men. was In Afghanistan, young boys dancing in women’s clothing is called ‘homosexuality’, which means the exploitation of teenage boys.
It should be noted that because of the ban on music and dancing by the Taliban, the parties are not as widespread as before, but abuse of children continues. Thousands of young and poor children, especially boys, are forced to support their impoverished families on the streets of Afghanistan. Most of these children are sexually abused.
“Once the Taliban came after me, I hid in a suitcase,” Jamila says. Another time, I hid in a barrel.
His brothers forbade him to go home, threatening that if he returned, ‘they would kill him or hand him over to the Taliban.’
“Once I missed my family a lot, I tried to contact them, but they told me not to contact them again,” says Jameela.
The threat of mass rap
Fauzia showed me footage of her broken windows and said, “Once around seven men came to my house to gang-rape me. I tried to hide. They broke my window and door.” I managed to escape, they treat trans people very badly, I am human too and I should not be treated like this.
Fawzia also said that ‘nobody pays me, they give me money to the people who take care of me, and they give me around Rs 1,000 a month.
Ali Tawakuli, an Afghan LGBT activist and founder and president of Germany-based Rainbow Afghanistan, says he has helped German authorities expel around 150 members of the LGBTQ+ community from the country since early 2022. has helped
“The German federal government announced changes to the withdrawal plan in 2023, which unfortunately slowed down the withdrawal process,” says Ali.
He says that Germany has evacuated about 50 people from Pakistan this year and still a large number of people are waiting.
“Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of this program is that it does not include people from outside Afghanistan, and those people have to apply from within Afghanistan,” says Ali.
“It is difficult to overstate the plight of Afghan refugees and the LGBT community in Pakistan,” he says.
Fauzia added that she is “waiting to move to Germany, but the wait is “really painful”. “I wish I was never born, death is better than this humiliating life,” she says. “Life is very difficult for Afghan refugees here. I’m emotional, I don’t know what to say.”
“I want to go abroad, where I can find my own place, where I can be free and where I will not be abused again,” says Jameela.