PESHAWAR: The head of the Transgender Community Organization, Farzana Riaz, has claimed that a minimum of 195 transgender people are killed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and the scale of killing is not less than that of an organized crime incident.
During the press conference at the Peshawar Press Club, alongside Vice President Mahi Gul and other members, Farzana Riaz accused local police of being in league with extortionists and of showing bias against the transgender community. She mentioned that despite numerous cases pending in courts, the offenders involved in kidnapping, extortion, and murder of the transgender community have not been arrested.
She charged that police in connivance with local government officials and community leaders conduct raids at the homes of transgender people, beat them, and issue illegal expulsion notices that force them to leave the area.
“We have knocked on every door for justice, but were turned away everywhere,” Farzana Riaz said. “The Peshawar High Court has finally heard our plea and sought responses from the KP Inspector General and the Capital City Police Chief.”
She informed that during the court hearing today, no official response was submitted by the police, prompting the court to grant an extension until November 4 to submit their reply.
Farzana Riaz demanded the immediate cessation of harassment and forced displacements of transgender people in Swabi, Nowshera, Charsadda, and other districts. “We are being treated like the enemies of the state and not like the citizens of Pakistan,” she expressed her grief.
She narrated the stories of the transgender people where, one of them was Naseema from Swabi who got an eviction notice within 15 days, was subjected to violence, and subsequently forced out of their district. Similar incidents have been reported in Charsadda, Swari, Haripur, Batkhela, Buner, and Nowshera, she added.
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Moreover, she criticised the government’s performance in the matter of transgender patients’ separate hospital beds in the health system, saying that it was an old promise of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government that still had not materialized after six years.
Farzana Riaz called upon the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police to urgently take cognizance of the matter. “We are part of this society and should be given the same rights and respect as everyone else,” she underlined.
