Why Nayyab Ali puts her life on the line to protect trans Pakistanis

In the basement of a residential building in a developing part of Islamabad, a dozen or so transgender women are sitting in a circle on the floor. Not one of them is a stranger to personal tragedy; each has been the victim of violence and exclusion. There is Naina, whose neighbor tried to have her killed over a domestic dispute; Rabia, whose landlord made her beg to earn her keep; and Mehak, who was abused as a child by one of her cousins.

That they are able to tell their stories without reticence or insecurity has much to do with their immediate surroundings. Here, in the Khawaja Sira Quran School, they are under the protection of Nayyab Ali – one of Pakistan’s most prominent and influential trans activists.

Ms. Ali founded the school as a space where members of the Khawaja Sira – a centuries-old term that has come to describe transgender and third-gender communities in Pakistan – could come together and learn the Quran in a safe environment. It also doubles as a shelter where transgender women can stay if they are left with nowhere to go, something Ms. Ali describes as a frequent occurrence.

Despite progressive laws defending the rights of the Khawaja Sira community, violence and discrimination against trans people remain common throughout the country. Five trans women were murdered in March alone this year, and many other violent crimes go unreported due to mistrust between trans people and the police. In her work with the Khawaja Sira Quran School, and as a victim support officer with the Islamabad Police department, Ms. Ali strives to create safe spaces for trans people – something experts agree is desperately needed, even as efforts are made to include trans people in civil society and government.

“The trans community in Pakistan is not safe at all,” says feminist academic Farzana Bari, who served as the director of the gender studies department at Quaid-i-Azam University. “If you look at transphobic crime in Pakistan, it seems to be rising. ... At the same time, we also see that the trans community has become collectively organized and developed a collective voice.” 

First point of contact

Many of those who come to stay in the shelter first encounter Ms. Ali in her role as the head of the Transgender Protection Unit of the Islamabad Police. The department – the first of its kind in the country – was created to eliminate the gap between the community and law enforcement by placing a trans woman as the first point of contact for victims.

“We never hear of transgender individuals getting robbed or harassed or beaten up in the news,” says Ms. Ali. “When we hear about the community on television, it is typically because a transgender person has been killed, and the reason we only hear about it then is that the pattern of violence that precedes the eventual murder goes unreported.”

This, according to Ms. Ali, is because transgender victims of crime often do not have faith that their cases will be processed by cisgender police officers. 

“The problem with law enforcement in our country is that officers are typically less interested in dealing with the incident they have been summoned for and more interested in treating trans individuals as objects of curiosity,” she says. “They are more interested in finding out whether you’re a man or a woman, more interested in your identity and orientation.”

To stop the police from getting sidetracked or exoticizing victims, Ms. Ali makes a point of visiting the crime scene herself, where she acts as a bridge between the police and the complainant. 

For Naina – who, like the other trans women at Ms. Ali’s shelter, chose to identify herself only by her first name – the knowledge that she was going to speak to someone in the community gave her the confidence to report that she had been threatened with murder. “Now pretty much every member of the trans community feels reassured that there’s someone who will stand up for them,” she says. “In the past, whenever someone used to harass or threaten us, we used to stay silent, but now that there’s someone who fights for us, we feel confident speaking up for ourselves.”

Her words are echoed by Nisha Rao, Pakistan’s first transgender attorney, who describes Ms. Ali as a pillar of strength for the community. 

“Even her own home is like a shelter facility. People are always coming and going. It’s like a railway station,” she says, smiling. “Twenty-four hours a day, she is available for the transgender community. She seems to spend every night in the police station advocating for trans victims. ... She doesn’t think about whether she’s going into a slum or a police station or a dangerous part of town. She’s fearless.”

Acceptance and persecution

The transgender community has a long and rich history in the Indian subcontinent. Under Mughal rule, Khawaja Sira individuals held prominent positions as guardians of the imperial harem and many accumulated great wealth and influence in court. When the British took over India in 1858, however, the community was specifically targeted and subjected to a campaign of extermination.

It is this oscillation between acceptance and persecution that has continued to characterize trans people’s status in postcolonial Pakistan. 

In May 2018, Pakistan’s Parliament passed a landmark bill allowing transgender people to self-identify their gender and to have this identity recognized on official documents. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act also prohibits discrimination against trans individuals in education, employment, access to health care, and property agreements. 

In spite of this law, however, members of the Khawaja Sira community are still widely shunned in Pakistani society. Transgender women are often forced to leave home as children and join small communities led by “gurus,” many of whom force them to work in the sex trade or beg on the streets in exchange for shelter.  

“We [Pakistanis] are only progressive on paper,” says Ms. Ali. “In the 2018 act, transgender rights are laid down pretty clearly, but the law does not stipulate penalties for those who break it. When you don’t penalize these infractions or set a punishment, in our legal system, it does not qualify as a crime.”

The law is also being challenged in the Federal Shariat Court, the constitutional body tasked with ensuring that legislation remains compatible with the teachings of Islam. According to Dr. Bari, resistance to the act is rooted in the idea of patriarchal supremacy. “The image of masculinity in which the man is strong and controls the subordinate sex is destabilized” by transgender people, she says. “This is a cause of a great deal of patriarchal anxiety.”

Overcoming intimidation

Ms. Ali’s work on the front line of transgender advocacy has made her a target of violent crime. 

In 2016, after helping a gang rape victim navigate the legal system, Ms. Ali was doused with acid at a music festival in Muridwala. In the three months that she spent in bed after that attack, a period in which she could barely talk or eat, Ms. Ali says she decided that if she survived, it was because she had been “chosen” to fight for her community. 

More recently, she had a gun pointed at her by one of her colleagues in the police department. The officer is now in jail, and Ms. Ali says the incident is still under investigation, but she’s facing pressure to drop the charges.

The experience has left her friends and colleagues fearing for her life. Activist Sherkan Malik, who is cisgender and assists Ms. Ali in her advocacy work, says that he has resigned himself to the fact that “we’re both going to get killed for doing this work.”

But for Ms. Ali, resistance is not a choice so much as a duty. “The truth is we cannot afford to be intimidated,” she says. “If we cow down to these threats and these acts of violence, we will only allow people to oppress us even further.”