PESHAWAR: The TransAction Alliance, an organisation of the transgender community, on Monday expressed concern about the growing incidence of violence against transgender persons and demanded the early arrest and punishment of the culpable people, including those involved in the recent Mardan incident.

TransAction Alliance provincial president Farzana and general secretary Arzo Khan told reporters at the Peshawar Press Club that transgender person Shakeela was subjected to severe violence by a group of young people in Mardan on Eid day but the police didn’t take action though the alliance’s leaders made repeated requests.

They claimed that Shakeela was forcefully taken from outside a mosque to a house, where she was thrashed for denying extortion up to Rs1 million.

The alliance’s leaders said the tortured transgender person had already paid money to extortionists.

TransAction Alliance threatens protests over Mardan incident

They Shah Zeb, Mansoor, Fakhr Alam and three other people had kept the transgender person in habeas corpus for three hours and freed her after shaving her head.

Farzana Jan said the Mardan violence incident took place in the jurisdiction of B Division police station, which had yet to act against the culpable people despite repeated requests by the community’s members.

She said an FIR was registered only after transgender persons staged a protest but the ‘influential’ attackers had yet to be arrested.

Farzana complained that 1,200 members of the transgender community were subjected to violence in the province since 2005, while 64 transgender persons were killed in the last four years.

She regretted that the successive governments didn’t do anything tangible to protect members of her community.

The alliance’s leaders demanded of the Supreme Court chief justice to take a suo motu notice of the growing incidents of violence against transgender persons for action against the culpable people.

They warned that they would stage demonstrations if the government didn’t act against the people subjecting the transgender community to violence.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2019