Sheith Khindir bin Abu Bakar - Feb26, 2017
An activist says they don't feel safe because the negative light they're painted in gives the message it's okay to harm them.
PETALING JAYA: LGBT activist Nisha Ayub has called for an end to the negative portrayal of transgenders, saying it puts them in danger of being harmed.
“We don’t feel safe in our own country,” she told FMT.
“Look at the way we are portrayed by certain people, religious authorities and certain media. They paint us in a negative light.”
She said the negative portrayal dehumanised the transgender community and conveyed the message that it was all right to harm them.
“A lot of transgender women don’t dare to go out of their homes alone. They’ll go out only in groups.”
She said police reports about attacks on transgender persons were often treated lightly. There has even been instances when the transgender persons making the reports were blamed for the incidents, she added.
“Most of the time, transgender people don’t even want to report an incident to the police because they don’t want to face the whole scenario of being blamed for something that happened to them,” she said.
“When I was attacked in 2015, I was taken so lightly that I had to bring a lawyer friend of mine to the station and only then did the police call it a case.”
In September 2015, two men attacked and injured Nisha with an iron rod while she was on her way to work.
More recently, a transgender in women’s clothing was found dead in Kuantan with three gunshot wounds. According to a Bernama report on Thursday, K Selamperasan, 27, who went by the name Shameera Krishnan, also had several slash wounds.
Police said the attack appeared to be an act of revenge.
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