Pakistan officials, the rights group condemn the murder of 3 transgender women

Armed men pulled and killed three transgender women on the outskirts of Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, before fleeing the premises, the police announced on Monday, highlighting the dangers encountered by the community across the country.

The victims’ bodies were found on Sunday on Sunday. All three were slaughtered at close range and the victims were then buried in a local cemetery, said Javed Abro, a senior police official.

The reason was not immediately clear and a hunt was underway to trace and stop the killers, said Abro.

Sindh’s province -in -province Murad Ali Shah condemned the killings and ordered an investigation.

“Transgender is an oppressed section of society,” he said, promising that those behind the attack are arrested.

Members of the Transgender community organized a demonstration on Sunday outside the Jinnah hospital managed by Karachi, where the bodies were taken for the autopsy. They warned against national demonstrations if the killers were not brought to justice.

Transgender rights activist Bindiya Rana told the Associated Press on Monday that violence against the community “is not new and that it is deeply rooted in our society”.

“If the police fail to identify the killers, we will announce a national demonstration,” she said.

Discrimination despite the recognition of the courts

The interactive gender alliance, a group for defense of local rights, identified the victims as residents of Karachi who have won their livelihoods by begging. The group also underlined a separate knife attack two days earlier which critically injured another transgender woman in Karachi’s Seaw View Beach.

“These consecutive tragedies show that the community is systematically targeted. It is not only individual murders, it is an attempt to terrorize and to silence an entire community,” said the alliance, demanding immediate arrests, a unit of protection dedicated to transgender people and greater solidarity of civil society.

Transgender people in Pakistan, a Muslim majority nation, are often subject to abuse. They are also one of the victims of so-called honor killings made by relatives to punish perceived sexual transgressions.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan recognized transgender people as a third sex, which offers them legal protection in theory, but discrimination remains endemic. The Pakistan Parliament in 2018 adopted a law to obtain fundamental rights for transgender persons, including legal recognition of gender, but activists say that social stigma and violence persist.