Pakistan gay laws
Trans rights in focus amid Pakistan legal battle
A law that provides legal recognition to transgender persons and prohibits discrimination and harassment has stirred a new debate in the conservative South Asian territory where homosexuality is still a crime.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of guarantees citizens their right to self-identify as male, female or a blend of both genders, and to verb their identity registered on all official documents, including passports, national identification cards, driving licenses and educational certificates.
Though the act was passed by parliament in May , new debates on social media have resurfaced in recent weeks, with critics opposing a specific clause that stipulates that "a transgender person shall own a right to be recognized as per his or her self-perceived gender identity."
Pakistan: Transgender people fight to abolish torture
Religious party files petition
Clerics have condemned this clause, prompting Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan from Jamat-e-Islami, a religious political party, to file a pe
Pakistan
Same-sex relations are banned in Pakistan under Section , a colonial-era penal provision that prescribes two years to life imprisonment, fines, or both for “carnal intercourse against the command of nature.” Laws against “obscene acts” and “unnatural offenses” contribute to widespread antipathy toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in Pakistan, although these are rarely enforced.
In contrast, transgender people, locally known as khawaja sara, are seen in a more complex way, both as bearers of good fortune and as outcasts. Consequently, their human rights are protected to a somewhat greater degree. The Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act of allows anyone whose gender does not conform to their sex assigned at birth to change their legal gender based on self-determination. The act further enshrines protection from discrimination in housing, employment, voting, and education. Nevertheless, social exclusion, harassment, and stigmatization of khawaja sira, transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming Pakistanis persist despite these legal protections. In
Which countries impose the death penalty on gay people?
Around the world, queer people continue to confront discrimination, violence, harassment and social stigma. While social movements own marked progress towards acceptance in many countries, in others homosexuality continues to be outlawed and penalised, sometimes with death.
According to Statistica Research Department, as of , homosexuality is criminalised in 64 countries globally, with most of these nations situated in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 12 of these countries, the death penalty is either enforced or remains a possibility for private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.
In many cases, the laws only apply to sexual relations between two men, but 38 countries have amendments that include those between women in their definitions.
These penalisations represent abuses of human rights, especially the rights to freedom of expression, the right to develop one's verb personality and the right to life.
Which countries enforce the death penalty for homosexuality?
Saudi Arabia
The Wahabbi interpretation of
'Happy and Gay' in Pakistan?
LAHORE, Pakistan, June 1, &#; -- It wasn't until she was 16 years old, when she'd left her Pashtun family in Peshawar for an elite school where the teachers were nuns, that Minot realized she was gay.
"I found out when I dated my literature teacher [a nun]," she said. "I got an A."
It is virtually unheard of in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for a lesbian to be willing to discuss her sexuality openly, especially a lesbian who is also Pashtun. The Taliban, who are overwhelmingly Pashtun and were born in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas near Peshawar, have pushed walls of bricks on top of gay Afghans.
But Minot, now 42, who asked that only her nickname be used because of societal stigma, sat recently in jeans and a T-shirt in the Pakistani city of Lahore, confidently talking about her sexuality, her girlfriends and her attempts to be with men.
"I have been with men, two men," she said. "But that was to earn the confusion out of my mind. Since then," she said, pausing, "happy and gay