PESHAWAR: Transgender female Alisha who was shot eight times earlier this week allegedly by a disgruntled customer succumbed to her wounds at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) on Wednesday.
The 25-year-old's is the fifth reported case of violence against trans people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year.
Adnan, Sameer, Komal and Ayesha were also targeted earlier this year. All are members of the Trans Action Alliance (TAA) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a group comprising civil society and trans people in the province.
The TAA recently held several protests against violence and demanded security but were shunned by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak whom they wanted to present their demands.
All kinds of attempts to kill, kidnap, harass, rape and humiliate transvestites have been made by different people, said to be ‘a group of blackmailers’, who extort money from them by intimidating and abusing them, rights activists and members of the alliance say.
Trans Action KP's Facebook page blames the KP government for the death of Alisha. "Alisha died in LRH because she never received intensive medical attention," a post said.
The group will carry Alisha's body to the Faqirabad police station for a demonstration.
In an earlier Dawn report, Qamar Naseem, a TAA member, narrated the experience of taking an injured trans person to LRH, one of the oldest health facilities in the province. "The doctors kept asking the injured Alisha if she danced only and how much she charged whereas the blood laboratory guy asked them if their blood was HIV positive or not," he said.
Know more: Transvestites face humiliation, violence
Farzana Jan, the president of Shemale Association of KP, was almost teary-eyed as she described to Dawn how she had to run around looking for doctors and finding a suitable ward while people, mostly attendants with admitted patients, chased her and teased her instead of helping her in the hour of need.
The male and female wards were also reluctant to have the injured transgender so the attendants including Farzana and other transvestites had to admit Alisha to a private room in Bolton Block of LRH.
Farzana said that people who were either patients or their attendants were continuously ridiculing them and laughing at them when they were going through a tragic incident.
"These people don’t laugh at us when they book us for their shows and family functions but they laugh at us when we like any human being are going through some trouble," she said. She added that she felt belittled and humiliated when instead of helping her injured friend people were laughing at them.
“They won’t let us treat our patients or even grieve for our dead at the hospital. I felt as if I am not a human being or even not from this world when I see such inhuman behaviour of so-called Muslim people,” said Farzana.
