MOSCOW, September 25 (RIA Novosti) — Human Rights Watch urged the Malaysian government Thursday to immediately revoke all laws discriminating against transgender people.
"Human Rights Watch calls on the federal and state governments of Malaysia to repeal discriminatory laws and fatwas that deny transgender people their basic rights – and prohibit them from being who they are," the organization said in its report “I’m Scared to Be a Woman: Human Rights Abuses against Transgender People in Malaysia,” released Thursday.
The 73-page report documents several cases of government abuse against transgender people in Malaysia, including arbitrary arrests and detention, sexual assault, torture, and the extortion of money and sex.
"Both religious and civil police have perpetrated abuses against transwomen during arrests. In some cases, Religious Department officials physically and sexually assault them during arrest or while in custody, or parade them before the media, humiliating them," the report states.
When arrested, transgender women are usually placed in male wards, where they may face sexual abuse from both guards and male detainees, according to HRW.
The term "transgender", as used in the report, refers to people who experience a "deep sense of identification with a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth" and not those "simply "cross-dressing" for pleasure."
Since the 1980s, every state in Malaysia has passed Sharia criminal enactments that "institutionalize discrimination against transgender people", HRW reported.
LGBT rights are largely unrecognized in Malaysia. The country retains colonial era laws criminalizing same-sex relationships and denies those with gender expressions not matching their assigned sex the right to change their legal gender.
