Controversy about Qatar hosting football’s World Cup has mostly focused on LGBT rights in the country and around same-sex relationships being criminalised. Transgender Qataris can be detained for “violating public morality”, which requires no trial or official charge. BBC News has spoken to two trans Qataris about their lives.
“I am very afraid, but I just want people to know that we do exist,” Shahd says about her decision to speak out about life as a transgender woman. Like the other person in this article, we have changed Shahd’s name to protect her. We have been messaging her over an encrypted app for her safety, and she travels away from her home to video call us in secret from a darkened room. Shahd shows us her hair which she was forced to cut into a masculine style, but does not reveal by whom. She then unbuttons her shirt to show us wounds on top of her chest.
Shahd says the wounds are the consequence of being arrested for “impersonating a woman”. Authorities told her to remove breast tissue that had formed since she started taking oestrogen, which she got without prescription from another country. “I lost my job and my friends,” she says. “I was arrested and interrogated several times because of my identity. I lost everything.”
Qatar is one of more than 60 countries where it is illegal to be gay. In Qatar, homosexual acts are against the law because they are considered immoral under Islamic Sharia law. Punishments include fines, prison sentences of up to seven years – and even death by stoning, although there is no record that this has happened. Police are able to detain someone for up to six months on suspicion of breaking “community protection” laws without trial or charge if they suspect a person has “violated public morality”. Shahd says she is constantly in fear of arrest.
A recent report by non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch detailed the arrests of LGBT people in Qatar, and found several trans people were among them, based solely on expressing their gender through clothes, hair or make-up. Shahd avoids crowded places at busy times of the day, because she feels people stare at her and might report her to the police. She says she has been arrested for “imitating a woman” while wearing make-up, and describes the government’s preventive security department – a branch of Qatari law enforcement – as like a “gang”. “They capture you and prevent you from telling anyone where you are. The prison is underground where they treat you like a criminal,” she says. “You will be handcuffed,” she said, laughing dryly as she added, “this is to protect society from us.”
Article URL : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63783327