The writer holds an MBA, an MSc in IT from the University of Glasgow, and legal education from the King’s Inns, focusing on social issues and public policy. Email: [email protected]
Talking about transgender rights in Pakistan usually makes people shift in their seats. You can see it happen. Someone checks their phone. Another clears their throat. Someone else starts, “Yes, but…” and stops. That reaction alone should tell us something. We avoid this conversation because it forces us to look at things we’ve learned to ignore. And yet the violence keeps happening, loudly, repeatedly.
Since 2022, more than five dozen transgender people have been killed in Sindh. Many were shot from close range. Not caught in crossfire. Not victims of random robberies. In some cases, their bodies were found on roads outside Karachi, left there like a message. Bullet wounds still visible. Names forgotten within days.
When the same thing keeps happening to the same community, it stops feeling accidental. It feels targeted. It feels like someone has decided these lives are cheap.
But even death doesn’t explain the full picture. Living as a transgender person in our society means living on edge. It means knowing that home might not be home for long. Families push people out. Landlords refuse to rent. Police officers who should protect often harass instead. A routine performance at a wedding can turn ugly in seconds. One insult, one crowd, one wrong look.
In parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, transgender people have been told outright that they are not welcome. Not allowed to live and work there. All it takes is an accusation of “immorality”. No proof, no investigation and suddenly their existence is treated like a crime.
What’s frustrating is that it didn’t always feel this bleak. In 2018, when the Transgender Persons Act was passed, there was a moment when things seemed to shift. The law recognised self-identified gender. It promised protection from discrimination. People talked about Pakistan setting an example.
That optimism didn’t last. Over time, court rulings and proposed legal changes started pulling those protections apart. Identity became something to be verified, filtered through medical boards and paperwork. For many trans-people, the message was painful but clear. You still need permission to be who you are.
The media plays its own part in this. Some killings make the news, briefly, a headline, maybe a panel discussion, then silence. Others are reported with a strange flatness, as if describing weather. Rarely do stories stay long enough to demand answers. Rarely do we see follow-ups asking who was arrested, who was charged, who walked free.
This is not just a transgender issue, even if that’s where the blood is most visible right now. This is about how we treat anyone who falls outside a narrow idea of normal. Religious minorities know this pattern. So do women. So do ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
First, you are pushed aside. Then the law becomes unclear. Then violence enters the picture. And when it does, the country shrugs because the victims were already seen as different. So, what actually helps? Treat crimes against transgender people like crimes. Proper investigations. Arrests that stick. Trials that end in convictions, not press releases.
Police should be trained to protect, not intimidate. Accountability matters. So does attitude. The media needs to stay with these stories, even when they stop being “new”.
And ordinary people matter more than they think like conversations at home, classrooms, public and social media places. Silence feels polite, but it’s not harmless. It’s what allows violence to repeat itself.
We can’t call ourselves a dignified society while people are hunted for existing. This isn’t about ideology or culture. It’s about safety. And once we start deciding whose safety matters, we’ve already lost more than we realise.
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