Islamabad, Feb 7 (EFE).- Activist Nayyab Ali is among the two transgender candidates contesting Thursday’s general election in Pakistan, a country with a long struggle for this community that is yet to be represented in parliament.
“I am hopeful of being elected,” Ali, who is running as an independent candidate for a seat in Pakistan’s National Assembly (Parliament) in two constituencies in Islamabad, told EFE.
With a green chile as election symbol, this renowned activist has been campaigning on the streets of the Pakistani capital with several ers from her community, calling for the need for change in the country.
“People are fed up with this current political system. Everyone who is fed up with this current political system should vote for me,” the Pakistani activist said.
In addition to Ali, Sobia Khan, another transgender activist, is running as an independent candidate in this election for a seat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly.
Ali has been championing the cause of human rights, gender equality and the cause of minorities in Pakistan for more than a decade, a struggle that earned her the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights in 2020, as well as the title of Gender Equality Advocate in Pakistan by the United Nations Development Programme.
Along with other transgender candidates, the activist ran for the first time in the 2018 elections from her hometown of Okara, in the northern province of Punjab.
Although none of these candidates won, they set the precedent for the political aspirations of others from their community.
Before them, the first transgender person to run for elections was the president of the country’s transgender association, Shahana Abbas Shani, who unsuccessfully contested the by-elections in Punjab province region in 2012.
Pakistan recognized the third sex for official documents in 2009 – a situation similar to that in Nepal and India – and in 2018 it ed a legislation to transsexuals, although real life conditions for them in this ultra-conservative country are far from normal.
Transgender women in Pakistan, known as “hijras” in most of South Asia, face social stigmas and are confined to marginalized spaces, and are often exposed to prostitution and venereal diseases.
The hijras, which translates as eunuchs, fall in the lower rung of the social hierarchy, and in many cases they are attributed magical powers, so it is common to find them in the streets offering blessings to people in exchange for alms. EFE
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