Transgender Alisha who was rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar after getting shot eight times, has passed away after being unable to sustain her injuries.
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Transgenders, also known as Hijra in Pakistan are poor and work as dancers or in the sex trade, are frequently victims of violence and extortion.
Alisha is the fifth activist from the TAA to be targeted and attacked in the last few months on the conservative province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
According to a report, the activist, called Alisha, was brought to Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, in an extremely critical condition and needed emergency surgery, following the attack on her in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday night. All are members of the Trans Action Alliance (TAA) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a group comprising civil society and trans people in the province. Until 2009 transgender people could not even obtain national identity cards. “If we can offer the prayers of murderers and anti-social elements, why can we not offer prayer for a person who was transgender”, asked one activist. Alisha told reporters at the time that she was ridiculed at government offices when she went to apply for a job, despite having 12 years of schooling. Furthermore, Qamar Naseem, Coordinator of Blue Veins Programme said LRH authorities are to blame for Alisha’s death as they “failed to provide her with urgent care or necessary facilities as she was transgender”. According to reports, the assailant was a member of a group that extorts money from transgender people. Friends said that Alisha got into an argument with an acquaintance, who shot her seven times outside a building in a busy section of Peshawar.
‘After we protested, Alisha was shifted to a female ward but then female patients had a problem with her being transgender, ‘ one supporter posted online.
The president of Shemale Association of KPK Farzana Jan further explained the difficulties of transgender people and said that it was debasing how she had to run around looking for doctors and finding a suitable ward while people, mostly attendants with admitted patients, chased her and teased her instead of helping her in the hour of need.
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In retrospect, that Alesha faced the same neglect and discrimination at the hospital, and ultimately died from it, seems a sad foregone conclusion. Finally, Farzana said, the hospital’s medical director intervened and assigned Alisha a room in the VIP wing.
