Pakistan's axing of transgender music festival shows nation 'not ready' to be inclusive

Two years ago, Canadian-Pakistani musician Urvah Khan launched an underground music festival, ScrapFest, to create a diverse and inclusive platform for the transgender community in Pakistan.

After four underground gigs, Khan was all set to take the event to a mainstream stage in Karachi earlier this month. But a day before the event, Karachi's Sindh High Court suspended permission for the event, which had been granted by local authorities.

"I wanted to offer a platform to people like me to express themselves, something that I didn't have while growing up," said Khan, who eventually hosted the event online. "But the majority of Pakistan wasn't ready for it."

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Human rights defenders said that the court's move has put the spotlight on the "discriminatory" stance taken towards the estimated half a million "khwaja sira" community - the overarching local term for transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people - in Pakistan, the Islamic nation where homosexuality is a crime.

In November, Joyland, a Pakistani film exploring the relationship between a married man and a transgender woman, was banned in Punjab, where hardline Islamic religious groups alleged that the film did not conform to social norms. Joyland went on to be shortlisted for the Best International Feature Film at The Academy Awards.

Stressing that both the ScrapFest's suspension and Joyland's ban violated the 2012 Supreme Court verdict that ordered the government to ensure the transgender community has constitutional protection, Supreme Court lawyer Hina Jilani said there is a lot of "contradiction" between equality and human rights in books as opposed to real life.

In 2018, Pakistan enacted a law that allowed transgender folk, intersex people, eunuchs, khwaja sira people and any other person whose gender identity or gender expression differed from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth, the right to be recognised as per their self-perceived gender identity. The law also protected them from all kinds of discrimination.

Religious clerics, however, say the legislation is "un-Islamic" and promotes same-sex relationships, and demanded amendments. Last year, a bill amending the law was sent to a Senate standing committee for debate.

Adding that ScrapFest's permission suspension order was only a reflection of the "hesitation to provoke religious groups", Jilani, also chairperson of the non-profit Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), said that "successive governments" had avoided challenging religious clerics and tried to "appease them instead".

Traditionally, transgender people served as political representatives, royal deputies, and emissaries of Sufism (a mystical Islamic belief). The discrimination against them began only during the colonial period, when the British criminalised homosexuality, and transphobic discourse began to take centre stage in India, and later Pakistan, which was created after India's Partition in 1947.

HRCP's senior communications and research manager Maheen Pracha said that many people from the "khwaja sira" community do not disclose their gender identity for fear of abuse and discrimination, and therefore officially, they are only 10,000 in number - fairly "under-reported" in the census.

Unofficial estimates put the community at 500,000 but over 90 per cent are unregistered by the National Database & Registration Authority.

Often shunned by their own families, many transgender people have no choice but to beg or earn money through singing, dancing and sex work.

Lahore-based Noshi Jaan, executive director of non-profit Trans Care Foundation, said some "exploitative khwaja sira collectives" push community members into prostitution, and some allegedly into human trafficking too, but these issues are never addressed.

Few transgender folk work in professional roles and the discrimination against the community continues.

Last year, transgender activist and policy specialist Mehrub Moiz Awan was removed from a panel of guest speakers in a private school following objections by parents over her gender identity. In 2018, transgender activist Julie Khan was not allowed to enter a five-star hotel until she clarified her gender since the hotel did not not allow transgenders inside. Khan refused to disclose her gender.

Between October 2021 and September 2022, 18 transgender people were reported to have been murdered in Pakistan.

In Punjab, where Joyland was banned, over 23 transgender people have been killed in the last eight years.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province bordering Afghanistan, has witnessed rampant violence against the transgender community in the past decade.

Peshawar-based Farzana Riaz, head of non-profit Trans-Action Alliance, said 97 transgender folk had been reportedly killed in the province since 2015.

"Not a single accused has been convicted yet," Riaz said, adding that they had routinely protested against the violence.

In a report last year on four murders of transgender people, the HRCP highlighted that "prejudices" prevented police from conducting unbiased investigations.

HRCP's Jillani said the rise of attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was "partially" linked with the resurgence of the Taliban there, and the "absence of [the] state's social policy to back the law".

Riaz said although the 2018 transgender law had promised access to education, jobs and accommodation, the community still struggled for these rights.

Pracha said a recent backlash against the law from "conservative political parties" encouraged perpetrators of violence to enjoy impunity.

As well as physical attacks, the transgender community faces hostility on social media.

When Urvah Khan announced ScrapFest would be hosted online, one Instagram user said she had initiated "a war against Allah" while a critic on Twitter said that these "so-called" human rights activists should not be allowed to "destroy" the nation, while many accused the festival of "promoting homosexuality".

"Hate campaigns and online naysayers have always been around but the fake propaganda, this year, pushed by social media influencers and media forced us to take our event to a virtual stage," said Urvah Khan.

She added, though, that she had also received support from many people, both locally and internationally. One social media user said the artists perform with "respect and dignity".

However, there does seem to be a growing divide within the community.

Activist Julie Khan believed ScrapFest reinforces the perception that khwaja sira people only "sing and dance", a narrative she has been fighting a long time.

The focus of some transgender people, Khan said, is to receive international funding by organising festivals but not change the everyday situation for the transgender community in Pakistan.

But Urvah Khan argued that ScrapFest brought multiple artists including singers, dancers, comedians and actors, across regions and religions, to promote "diversity".

At a time when intolerance is high, "conversations" about gender rights are extremely important, Khan said, and if ScrapFest offers a platform for such discussions, then it is surely serving a purpose.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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