IN a country where survival is a daily struggle for the transgender community — which faces rape, extortion, rejection and systemic denial of healthcare and education — Pakistan’s most marginalised community is now being told to leave their homes.

On Sept 13, as reported by this newspaper, an 11-member committee of elders in KP’s Swabi district, ordered the community to leave, claiming they were corrupting local youth.

This ostracisation followed a police raid targeting a dance and music function, organised by the community a few days earlier. Over 200 people, some of them trans persons, were arrested and many were beaten with batons. The complaint was lodged by a police officer at the Swabi City Police Station, charging them with unlawful assembly, public obscenity and possession of deadly weapons. The FIR stated that the “music event was playing immoral songs at high volume through loudspeakers, and [there was] obscene and immoral dancing in half-naked clothes”.

With little support from family and often having to run away from abuse and shame, the only avenue left for trans persons to survive and earn a livelihood is dancing, begging or prostitution.

The transgender community faces continuous hostility.

Let’s give the police and the elders the benefit of the doubt. For the sake of argument, let’s assume everything stated in the FIR is true — that the community is guilty of transgressions and is corrupting the youth of the district. Let them be banished. But if that is the standard, then the men who attend such gatherings must be banished too. Justice cannot be one-sided.

And if justice is truly to be served, then before this community is expelled, madressahteachers, accused of raping and sodomising young students, the drug peddlers selling their lethal ware (the use of ice among youth in Swabi, as elsewhere, is rising) and those who kill in the name of honour should also be exiled. And all the rapists, murderers and extortionists who prey on trans persons must be thrown out.

Since the beginning of 2025, at least 15 trans persons have been killed in KP, and nearly 1,400 cases of extortion, rape, kidnapping and other forms of harassment have been recorded, says Farzana Riaz, president of the Peshawar-based Transgender Community Alliance, advocating for the protection of the community. “Rape, extortion and harassment is part and parcel of our daily struggle,” says a trans woman from Swabi, “We rarely report them because the perpetrators are often the police or some powerful people.” “Fear,” she adds, “keeps us silent.”.

The announced expulsion in Swabi is part of a wider crackdown that began a few months back in Batkhela and has since spread across several KP districts, including Bannu, Mardan, D.I. Khan, Swat, Peshawar and Buner. It is important to understand the motive behind this expression of hatred, which has erupted suddenly; the trans community has always been dancing and singing to earn. Being the most vulnerable and easiest target, were they picked by the elders to reassert the latter’s waning authority or distract citizens from larger economic and social problems? Or is it a ploy to gain political advantage in certain constituencies?

This dangerous trend must be stopped before it spreads nationwide and erases the progress made since 2009 when the Supreme Court recognised the community as equal citizens with fundamental rights. Unfortunately, violence against them is already being reported. Following the expulsion threat, in Karachi, three bullet-riddled bodies of trans persons were found in the Memon Goth neighbourhood.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, which guarantees self-identity, share in inheritance, protection from discri­mination in health, education and emp­loyment, has faced stiff resistance, with at least a dozen petitions filed in the Federal Shariat Court between 2020 to 2023 in this regard. Despite surviving their hard-won recognition, for the known 50,000 transgender citizens of Pakistan, the law remains largely buried in the statute books.

Still, even in the face of continuous hostility, the community refuses to back down. In a landmark response, 26 petitioners from various KP districts have filed a case against the inspector general of police of the province and various district police officers in the Peshawar High Court, accusing them of harassment, humiliation and public shaming — acts that violate Articles 4, 9, 14, 25, 26 and 28 of the Constitution.

Clearly the threat of expulsion is hollow. As citizens of Pakistan, no one has the authority to expel another person from their own home. Instead of keeping silent, the state must act and prosecute those who are inciting violence against them. The laws are out there to protect trans persons; the question is will the state uphold its part of the bargain, and protect this group?

The writer is a Karachi-based independent journalist.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2025