Episode 19: A Trans-Continental Exchange - Queer Plight, Flight, And Rights - The Emancipated Citizen

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:14):
Hello and welcome to the Emancipated Citizen Podcast, where two human rights
activists bring to you the stories of some of the bravest men and women out
there fighting for their freedom and individuality against authoritarianism and repression.
Today we are having a conversation with Lilith Hanoum,

(00:35):
who is a refugee from Pakistan in Germany and an outspoken voice for the trans
and LGBT community here.
Especially when it comes to the conversation around LGBT refugees.
She is an educator on this topic and has brought to us a lot of valuable insights

(01:04):
when it comes to bringing in, integrating,
feeding justly those minorities coming into Germany, to Europe,
to the place where both of us have come to call our home the past years.
So being a transgender person in Pakistan, that is a perspective that I honestly,

(01:28):
I don't think I have come across in my personal life much.
And I don't think it's a perspective that a lot of people see around the world.
So I thought I'd let you, yeah, maybe introduce yourself a little bit and tell

(01:52):
us about your story from the beginning, like chronologically,
maybe start,
yeah, where things began with you, your upbringing,
how, yeah, how things like culture, identity, family and community,
like how you came to deal with those things.

(02:14):
Things in your early life and, and yeah, move, move on to, to the further development.
Thank you, Zach. So my name, as you introduced, is Lilith and I'm from Pakistan.
As a trust in the person or trust in the woman from Pakistan, it's different.

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It's like every other individual.
You have your own history, you have your own issues, you have your own challenges
that you have to fight in the society.
So I had my own package that I had
to carry all the time so I I'm in my late 30s now so I was born somewhere in

(02:58):
the 80s and born in a small family Shia Sunni Muslim parents not too many brothers and sisters.
So I'm the oldest one so I was the first one there
and I was born in a in
a village so I'm not from from a city i'm

(03:19):
not a city girl uh that's also
when people look at me they they realize that okay she's
not from the city as a child it
was yeah maybe obvious for other people not for me that i'm different how in
which perspective nobody knew that maybe or maybe people knew that but nobody

(03:42):
talked about it with me because they were like oh it's a small kid what what do we have to talk about?
But I remember vividly that as I was three and a half years old,
around four years old, I got myself my ears, both earlobes pierced because I
wanted to look like my mother.

(04:03):
And where did this come from? I have no idea.
I still don't know where does this feeling feeling comes from
and that was the very first time that
it became obvious also in the in
the community okay that's a boy not
a not a girl because the person who pierced my ears thought i am a girl that's

(04:25):
why they did it so they they knew it themselves not sorry it it can happen during
my conversation that out of nowhere some of the german words might just spill out.
Because my mind is trained in
speaking german anyways axel so that's

(04:46):
so yeah it happens it's it's something that i have no control over i mean both
of us speak some german and well i mean ben speaks a little bit of german i
speak german a lot of our audience speaks german we can clarify everything so
it's no issue thank you yeah.
So yeah, and the family was not that religious, but of course,

(05:10):
they were holding up to the religious construct and all these dogmas around religion.
So my mom never forbid me or asked me not to do anything which was not counted as manly enough.
I was also allowed to wear henna on my hands when we used to have Eid.

(05:32):
It doesn't matter if it was Eid al-Fitr
or Eid al-Adha I would have henna on my hands and very beautiful patrons on
it and I loved it and it was okay but as soon as I became 14 years old or something
around there that's when the first time I realized who I am,

(05:55):
but I had no words for it I don't
know how to explain it in words like you know who you are but you do not have
a label to put onto it because the label in your surrounding doesn't exist and
you are a village child so you don't know much of the world and I was born in

(06:15):
the 80s so I didn't have internet.
It's such a big blessing for so many peoples in today's world that they have
to understand that you guys can connect with other people and you guys can find
out things that you You want to know just on your fingertips.
I never had that. I didn't know who I am, what I am. Why are these feelings in my mind? So, yeah.

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And that's the first time I think I told my mom. I think I'm a woman.
And I got good beat from my parents.
Until that point
until that point we're like piercing
the ears and the hinders of all of that i mean i

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i get the impression that mothers are usually i don't
know more relaxed about this kind of thing but fathers are are a lot more strict
yeah was it like otherwise fine or in in your surroundings or or did you otherwise
experience like societal and social discrimination.

(07:27):
From other people from other
relatives sorry from other
people and from other relatives yes but from my own small family even up till
then my father was also okay with that because because we were not that religious
religion didn't play a huge role in our day-to-day life it was usually,

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Yeah, you pray, when you have to pray, you fast, but you don't have to fast
all the 30 days of the month of Ramadan.
And you must go to the Friday prayers. That's it.
And it's not like that you have to wear abaya or burqa or there was nothing in the house like that.

(08:15):
It was, yeah, quite relaxed.
But it all changed because I got confused.
Music.
So it happened that because I was not connecting with my identity and with my
religion as I was around 15 years old.
I turned 16 and then I was fully matured and sexual being.

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And being a sexual being, you don't know what to do.
The society is telling you, OK, you are a man. You look like a man.
So in four or five years, you will have to marry a woman and then you will have
kids. That's how it's usually going on for the last two, three hundred years.

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And that's what I used to get from the society, from the neighborhood and from
all the relatives in the community.
And that is when I started to study religion because I got confused.
My family was not religious, but all of a sudden now I need to find a definition for myself.

(09:21):
And security a
sense of stability in my mind that
whatever or whoever I am it's okay
to be in a Muslim society to be around Muslims and all will be fine the God
is not going to punish you because it was like something that I didn't realize

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that I am like that did you were you aware that there There were also other people like that.
Not until I was 18.
That's the drawback of living in a village.
You don't have enough people like you around you.

(10:04):
Anyways, so once I became to know, or I got to know all this.
Sorry for the interruption.
So you were basically trying to find some sort of framework for your identity
within the religion? Yeah.
And did you in any way find something of the sort? Not at all.

(10:29):
Quite the opposite. So I started studying religion from one of the alim, a scholar in the area.
Music.
And he would give us lectures after the prayer of Maghrib, the evening prayer.
And once I started learning Arabic translation of the Arabic Quran and also Tafsir,

(10:55):
Tafsir-e-Hakani and Khunzul-e-Ma'an, all those kind of different interpretations,
I got even more confused. I was like, okay, fine.
So I wanted to find a balance
between my identity and my my religion
and there i landed in in a

(11:16):
place where i started questioning the religion itself i
was like if it's it's a religion of peace it
was very common back then it's a religion of peace
i'm talking about 2002 and 2003 and i was almost 18 years old and then somebody
told me in the religion lessons oh there are also third gender people in Pakistan,

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you should talk to them as well I'm just saying talk to them they didn't want to come disrespectful.
They were like oh you should talk to those people maybe you should find something
there and that's the first time I came to know that there are third gender people
in Pakistan and that's a a big spectrum of different identities.

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It's not just the trans women. There are also intersex people.
There are also demisexual or demigirls and demiboys and homosexual men who are way too feminine.
Music.
And then there are also, but no trans men, by the way.
That's a different story that that had more to do with patriarchy in our part of the world.

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And also no lesbian, anyways.
So I came to know about that.
Music.
To be honest, I was not somebody who was easy to be kept in a cage or easy to

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be made shy of something.
I wasn't like that. I was very bold and I would ask for talents.
I would ask different questions.
Even when I was learning Islam, I was like asking questions.
Why a man is allowed to have four wives and why not a woman is allowed to have four husbands?
Or why didn't the god banished slavery

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why did it was allowed to free
slaves but why would you keep
slave to free slaves just let
everybody be free or the questions lie
like there is this in
surah i think you have some verses
which are about rape and zina

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and it was mostly about the
men have to there should be four men who have seen the
act of penetration and i was like who would
be foolish enough to rape someone and look
at the act of penetration and don't stop it like
what's what's the what's the

(14:00):
going on in the mind so all these questions the whole
those whole rulings don't
talk about rape per se because as like
as far as i can tell like the understanding of
rape within traditional islamic context
like they didn't really have have been understanding of rape there's there's

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an understanding of zina there's there's sex outside of marriage and all that
but i mean the concept of consent itself is not is not really established within
early islamic culture and literature.
But they were trying to some of the.
Music.

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And that's usually for women, and also not for men, actually.
If the men or women are going, adulterous.
And a question about the community of people who were not gender conforming, as we can say.
Is that analogous to the Hijra community in India? Is it the same thing,

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or is it something different?
No, it's not different. It's exactly the same thing. and
how how different are like
are they treated by society in in
pakistan as opposed to india if you if you
have much of a background as as to be that background
in india because i would imagine that that and

(15:38):
like that islamic culture would be somewhat more
harsh on on this kind of thing than than hindu culture am i seeing this correctly
yes yes you are you are it's it's it's usually not also about so the the hijra
community or the kinder community has profited a lot from.

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Mahabharata not the mahabharata the ramayan sorry
because it was the god ram who
gave the blessing to the third gender
people that you can bless or
curse people and you have that godly powers in you and that that is something
that is layman knowledge in all around south asia it doesn't matter if you go

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from teshawar up until dhaka everybody knows from east to west and if you go go from,
I don't know, from Srinagar up until Karachi or even up until Chennai.
So that is pretty prevalent in Pakistan as well. It's everywhere.
It's everywhere. And I remember when I was a kid.
Music.

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My family respected the Hijra community because they would come at least twice
a year to ask for clothes,
clothes ask for food and ask
for money so you being in in
a in a village so you had different kind.
Music.

(17:09):
Of things that you could offer to them so my
family was always respectful towards hijra
community but i didn't know as a kid what's what
is that you don't know you see only women who
looks different yeah yeah i mean
respectful is is one way like there's a certain like distance type of respect

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of please don't curse me like kind of a strange thing that's that's outside
of our society but in terms of like you know inclusion that's.
There's no inclusion. No. I mean, if somebody makes the decision to kind of

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travel with those people or whatever,
you don't really have the chance of having a normal career in society and having
a normal job and having a family and that kind of thing.
That's what I realized when I was 20 years old.
Because up until 20 I completely realized that I woman but I'm a different woman

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and I don't know how to realize how to bring the woman out let's put it that
way what can I do to live the life,
that I want to live or I can't I should live I didn't know that I was I was
not stupid but I I didn't have enough resources.

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Now we are resourceful. Now we have resources everywhere. You just need to just
open your mobile and you can find anything you want to. I didn't know that.
By the age of 20, I realized, okay, so this is the path I cannot take.
Because if I will take this path, the only thing I will do is either I will
beg or I will go into prostitution.

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And the third thing that the trans community has to do is to dance on different
occasions like marriage, celebrations,
birth, or also the circumcision, all those kind of different festivals in a society.
They dance to give the blessings. So the blessings part from the Hinduism is still there.

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And they ask for money and other things. So I was like, no, this is not what I can do.
So I began to study further.
And one thing which I didn't talk about, from the class or standard 5 up until
standard 12, I was bullied by everybody.

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But my schooling, my entire up until high school, I don't remember a single
day I was not bullied for being feminine.
And I didn't even know what does that mean.
My mom would tell me whenever I go back home and I would tell they are telling me that I am feminine.
So we have different kind of vulgar words for people who are feminine,

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like in English language, you call them faggot or you call them in German schwuchtel.
Things like that and i couldn't understand any of that what does it imply so
the implication of those words were not there and my mom would be like they
are stupid they don't know anything so you do your work you should study and
that's it don't listen to them too much.

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Twice or thrice, I landed up in a fight within the school.
And then my mother has to go to school and talk about things.
And I couldn't talk to her what happened.
Because people, my class fellows would tease me.
And children, I know children are merciless.

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We all have our childhood.
And and i don't remember anybody who
didn't go through stupid things as a
child in the school you all go through that so i
for me the problem was understanding those things
for me it was not the problem that i was
different i knew i was different and my

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mom knew i was different it's it's just
that the society was giving me too much pressure pressure
these were giving me too much pressure and as i became
18 up until i was like 20 to 24
something people would see me wearing a
bracelet or something and or a
necklace or something like somehow trying to

(21:46):
live my femininity in me
while still trying to
adjust with the social norms of
being a man people would tell me
in my face oh that's haram you shouldn't do that that's
throughout the time at least in so

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far as you have lived in pakistan i would
imagine you made an active effort to basically pass as a man right to live the
life of a man basically how How long did that situation last?

(22:31):
10 years. From 16 up until I was 26.
So before 16, it was okay because I had a late puberty. The puberty started
after 15, something like that.
I was 16 almost when the puberty hit me. before that i was counted or seen as
a child so people wouldn't mind too much about my silly things whatever i would

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be doing it's just silly things my mom was okay with everything,
it's just how once you have common wasn't to hear how common was it to go through
puberty i don't know i remember all my school fellows they already hit the puberty
i didn't i was still She had a child and they were young boys.

(23:18):
And they would ask me different they would ask
me specific questions about body hair and i would
be like no there are
some interesting scientific questions about that that are not for now but still
interesting i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't look too much into that i mean i

(23:38):
mean i think at my school we had my like some boys who were i don't know a little
late and in developing in in some ways,
I mean, it's within the normal kind of variation in human development.
Well, yeah, it happens to everyone at a different time, but yes.
Yeah, I mean, so during this time, was it something negative that pushed you out of Pakistan?

(24:09):
Was it more of an opportunity to accomplish something abroad?
Abroad yeah at what
point did you leave germany and come to terms
with with your true identity and come out
and start speaking out how did that
process like kind of take place so as long as i was in pakistan i i realized

(24:35):
that if you want to live in this country you need to be academically fit to
find a good job and a status in the society.
For me, it was more important or more focused on having a good status because
if you have a good job, you have good money,

(24:56):
and everybody sees you with respect, a little bit of femininity is okay.
Let's put it that way. It's It's okay.
Nobody's going to kill you for that. But you have to mask yourself as a man all the time.
That's the only thing. You don't have to come out. The coming out is something

(25:17):
that everybody hates in Pakistan. Everybody knows.
You don't have to talk about it. For me, coming to Germany was mostly about
getting higher education.
I came here to study. I wanted to do my master's degree in Germany.
And they were offering a course which was really relevant for me.

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And I was like, okay, fine, let's go there.
And when I came here, it was culture shock.
We have atheists almost everywhere. wear
but for
me it was like oh god they don't speak
my language i don't speak their language i don't

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know how to live with these people the food is
different the smell is different everything is
different it was a huge culture shock for me when you say you don't speak their
language you mean english or german german english i would speak i english i
i'm i've I studied in an English medium school, you call it.

(26:21):
Could you get around that because of how widely spoken English is in Germany?
Germans don't like to speak in English.
They don't. It's another thing about that. We can also talk what are the issues.
But most of the people they do learn English in schools, but then they forget. And.

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Music.
I mean, I feel like it's also kind of a generational thing.
You notice with older people, it's kind of more the case.
Whereas, especially the younger,

(27:07):
like, the youth and the youth that are traveling and want to travel,
are mostly more, I don't know, like, left-leaning and that kind of thing.
Yeah i mean even even the german language is becoming more more and more anglicized,
and the joke among the countries where english is the main language is that

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when a german says they speak a little english it means they speak it better than you do.
That's that's true but they don't yeah they
don't start the conversation in english they they
wait for that that you you actually
poke and and push them to speak in english then they

(27:51):
will do it and might do it
better than you yeah so yeah
i it it was a culture shock back to the your
question and the first year
i was like trying to grapple with with
my situation how to get along in my

(28:12):
day-to-day life because in the university it
was all fun it was really good everybody would
speak in english with you because you are in an international master's
program but as soon as you go outside and
want to make new friends you go to the bar you go to
a club you go to a cafe and you want to talk to people that is another case.
Music.

(28:32):
You can't talk to the the strangers here that often and I'm happy to be living
in part of the Germany where it's okay to talk to strangers.
I'm not going to tell which part, but it's fine to talk to strangers in this

(28:53):
part of Germany compared to other parts of the Germany.
So that's where I had a lot of issues with people.
And then I was also trying to get to know the queer community,
the queer people, the LGBTI community community within Germany.
And that was also one issue where I was always.

(29:15):
Trying to fit in but i couldn't because they they would i i do the same now i i'm i'm so,
integrated and assimilated in this culture
i do the same thing if there is one person who
speaks in english and everybody else is speaking german i think
i'm not going to speak in english unless or

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until i have to to include the person it's
it's very strange kind of
behavior but i try right not to do it
but involuntarily you do it anyways i
mean big part of our day is like on autopilot
and like it doesn't even matter which language like
like you know some days in certain contexts i'm

(29:59):
used to like speaking one language and if somebody comes to
me like speaks to me like i remember one
time at work like like we always speak in german
and this guy asked me a a question in arabic i'm like
what what do you think that
doesn't make sense and that oh oh that was meant
in arabic okay now it makes sense so sometimes you do need a bit of a conscious

(30:23):
switch to kind of to kind of switch from one language to another that's true
i completely understand that
oh that that doesn't happen where i work english and arabic fly around,
together all the time.
Except, of course, I don't know very much Arabic.

(30:43):
So the both languages are mixed all the time? Yeah, my boss is Egyptian. Okay.
So he speaks the Masari Arabic. Yeah.
And gotta say, working with him makes me appreciate your situation a lot too.

(31:04):
And since I'm not going to be working there much longer I can actually say that
without having to worry about too much.
Yeah so just like quick question about that did you at that point have any Islamic
baggage or like problems with,
like this LGBT scene or were you at that point kind of more at peace with it

(31:27):
and kind of kind of abandoned the more,
fundamentalist kind of of conceptions around.
Gender and sexuality.
So I came when I was 26 to Germany.
So at around 22, I left Islam and I was not, even before that,

(31:50):
actually, between 20 and 22. Interesting.
You weren't even like in a mindset of, wow, I'm now in Germany.
I can, you know, I can be free and come out and live as a woman and all of that.
That's not how you're thinking at that point, right?
No, not at all. i was i was still trying
to trying to understand myself because

(32:12):
you have to understand one
thing your your frontal lobe your your brain frontal
lobe it develops up until you are 25 so you're
still trying to understand yourself as
a young human being who you are what
you are what kind of of personality you

(32:32):
are yeah so i
i didn't know it wasn't developed i was irrational
as well sometimes i wasn't always rational i was very irrational i have made
decisions in my life which i do regret for those decisions i have been raped
abused and all that it happened in pakistan and And it happened quite often with me.

(32:57):
But that's when you are not thinking properly.
So when I came to Germany, I just turned 26.
So I was still somewhere trying to find out myself and see who I am.
And I was trying to talk to queer people here and with the queer community.
And that's when I came to know that one of my class fellow is a trans man.

(33:18):
And up until that point, I didn't know that there are also trans men in this world.
So welcome to a new world for me.
Like that's where everything, it was a snowball effect for me then.
So I came to know a trans man and he introduced me to the community of LGBTI

(33:41):
and all those people coming from all over the world who are LGBTI and I can meet those people.
I am, in the beginning, it was lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people.
And then it became also within in front
of my own eyes agender asexual and so
many other letters within the queer umbrella

(34:03):
or within the queer community that's when
i i came to know about myself that oh
i'm not third gender i am
a trans woman because in pakistan the
third gender concept is either you are
both man and woman or you

(34:24):
are neither nor from from
the from the it's it's like the the
logical concept behind what does it
mean to be a third gender person and for me in my mind even i knew it back then
when i was 18 that there are third gender people so in my mind that was not
logical for me that you can be either both or neither nor.

(34:51):
It didn't fit in my mind or my neurons couldn't work around it.
It is interesting that certain traditionalist societies like say in Pakistan might speak.
Recognize that like the existence

(35:13):
of non-binary gender identities but
like more binary transgender people not and
whereas yeah i mean i feel like
the direction things are going in the west
at least like people on on the more traditionalist side
are making kind of the opposite

(35:34):
argument that's like the
non-binary concept doesn't fit their plan
but at a certain point like binary transgender
people do kind of fit some some vision or so some model of the world that they
have although it is some dichotomy there yeah it is definitely worth mentioning

(35:57):
though that from from ancient Greece until probably the late middle ages,
even later men being feminine made no sense, but a woman becoming masculine,
they go, yeah, why wouldn't you want to do that?
That because what made Joan of Arc unique wasn't that she was taking on a male role as a warrior.

(36:21):
It was that she was taking on a male role while still being a woman. The, the.
They're absolutely seen as a gender continuum and just
male was best female was worst somewhere in between the
two was somewhere in between the two that's very
much true also for the pakistani society so men

(36:42):
are the best one and i i actually when
i was also in the in the in the
mosque and studying religion in islam
for intersex people according to the scholar i
was going to if you are going for prayers in
the first row it has to be the older men
then the younger men and the most youngest and then the

(37:04):
the kids and then intersex people
and then after intersex people
it has to be the women and i was
like what yeah because they are between both the
genders is like wow okay so so
for them it was easy to understand that or
or to wrap their hand head around it okay that's

(37:27):
how it is but in the western part that
was also something very difficult for me in the beginning that was
also a culture shock the binary is so
rigid rigid for me as a as a so ethnically i am punjabi for us the binary is
not that rigid because men and women both wear kajal men and women both are

(37:52):
going to like wear some sort of.
Scent men and women both wear some sort of colored clothes men and women both
wear some some sort of embroidered clothes and also shoes even.
They look different, but they are embroidered.
And the binary in the vest was so strict for me. I was like,

(38:15):
wow, the colors are different.
Women have to wear different kind of heels. Men are not supposed to wear heels.
Then you're even the cutting of the dresses. It's different.
Anyways, that was something I was also struggling with.
Why is it so rigid why can't a man wear boots which are not made of plastic

(38:38):
and they look like the long boots of women why can't they do that and they were
like no we don't have that.
It's only for those who work in the in the in the fields they will have to wear
then the plastic boots the bigger ones but not the boots like the women wear
you don't see that unless or until you you are in the west of maybe America

(39:03):
and you are a cowboy or something like that,
then you might have knee-long boots. Otherwise, you don't.
I think if a man wears cowboy boots and he's not actually a cowboy,
I think a lot of people might make assumptions that he may not be fully straight.
Yeah, but those are different things.

(39:25):
There was a running gag on How I Met Your Mother about Ted's red cowboy boots there. Yeah.
Although I actually do have a pair of boots that aren't plastic,
but it's because I was a wildland firefighter until a few months ago. Oh, cool.
Job wasn't for me, but we'll just leave it at that. That's not here nor there.

(39:47):
In any case, yeah, I mean, I would like to get to, well, your work now and, well,
let's say the other part of this discussion and what we wanted to talk about,
the work that you're doing to help LGBT refugees and what we can do to help them,

(40:11):
what you have learned through your experience and what you can bring to us.
Because before we move on, is there something you would like to add insofar
as your journey here in Burmini,
maybe like contact your family coming out, how those things were kind of dealt with?

(40:32):
Would you like to say something about that before we move on to the work that you do there?
Yeah, sure. Sure. So I came out to my family at the end of 2015 and I told them
that I'm a trans woman and it took me from 2013,
so the full year of 2013 and 2014 and almost the full year of 2015.

(40:58):
So it took me almost three years to realize who I am.
I had to learn a lot.
I had to read a lot. I had to meet new people so it
was a lot of exchange of knowledge which was going
on I told my mom on telephone of
course she was disheartened so I
went to meet her in Pakistan and I told everything and in the beginning she

(41:23):
was not accepting that but she didn't ostracized me and then later I told them
also about Islam that I have left Islam that's where she got really really scared.
She got even more scared when I told her I'm not Muslim anymore than when I
told her that I'm a trans woman.

(41:44):
That's also strange how we handle fear as human beings.
But later it became, up until now, it has become really easy for her.
She calls me her princess and she's okay with me living my true side.
That's one other thing I wanted to cover before we move on.

(42:08):
So in 2018 I
saw a bunch of people citing that Pakistan
had a law granting rights to
transgender people and people were saying how progressive
Pakistan was for doing that what do you
think people who maybe aren't who
are in certainly in favor of trans rights but

(42:30):
aren't super familiar with what's happening in oh
we'll say places to the east of greece what
do you think they should take from that so the
the transgender rights act
bill it was passed in 2018 i
was very happy back then oh good takasan

(42:52):
has done something worthwhile you have
to understand that one thing that it came out
to be as one of the remarkable and never seen
before not even existing in the
west kind of rights act
for transgender person but the problem was the implementation of that act they

(43:17):
got it passed the community the transgender community got it passed in a parliamentarian
session where not most of the parliamentarians were even there.
What the West could take from it is that.
The countries who think that the gender spectrum is a new thing,

(43:38):
they need to understand that we always had gender spectrum.
The only problem now is that you as a citizen, you have responsibilities towards
your state and the state has responsibilities towards you.
And that's where we are now having conflicts of interests.
There are certain people who have already acquired rights from the state,

(44:02):
and they don't want that the gender divergent or gender spectrum individuals who are neither,
let's say, conventional man or conventional woman should also get those rights.
This is something that Pakistan at least did on the paper when it came to the
act, but not in implementation. In implementation, I must say,

(44:26):
implementing that bill is not easy.
And it came out two years ago that when the right-wing Islamist parties.
They read the bill in silence or they got time to read about that,
they went all gaga on the streets. There were protests.

(44:50):
And that's the first time they ever came to know that you can be a trans woman
and you can be a trans man.
Before that, everybody understood that trans people are actually intersex people.
And that was the only shield behind that.
Most of the trans community and genderqueer community was staying behind.

(45:13):
And that was the protective shield that
fell off in 2022 that's it it was the end of it and now all the mullahs and
all the muftis and all the right fingers aunties and uncles and whoever has
a grip on their telephone and have tiktok or instagram or whatever they're making videos about.

(45:38):
What being transgender is partly
what kind of protected the trans community for a long time because they have
this kind of big understanding of being intersex and all of that and at a certain
point they got to realize what that actually is I don't know I guess not,

(46:02):
same even in Germany sorry
it was same in germany people
used to think that gay and lesbian are third gender just 100 year ago magnus
hirschfeld he wrote about it he is one of the biggest sexologists in the 19th
century in germany and he called them he called him third gender he couldn't understand that,

(46:30):
Or the words changed. Now we call it queer.
I wouldn't say he didn't understand. I think he understood it,
but he called it third gender. That's what his understanding was.
In alignment with our modern-day understanding of what gender is.
So, yeah. Tell us about your work, your activism,

(46:53):
your founding of the Queer European Asylum Network,
org the people you have you have
come in contact with and and and yeah helped
in in seeking safety in europe maybe start by telling us about your journey
and some of the things you have learned some of the things that you can pass

(47:13):
on to us so i did my master's degree i'm not going to say in which subject, but anyways,
my focus was on climate change and the migration.
So I already have studied the migration laws, the international migration laws,
and especially the international refugee and asylum seeking laws.

(47:38):
So when I came out in 2015, I was already in contact with a lot of queer activists in Germany.
And then came a huge number of people from all over the world.
When Angela Merkel said, everybody is welcome. And she said,
we are Schaffendass. We will achieve it.

(47:59):
That's another story. And she, these people, they came, they came with,
of course, their own challenges and with their own issues.
They were mostly asking for asylum asylum as a
refugee that they should be given asylum status and
because I had studied that so I

(48:20):
started talking to people what are the issues they are
having and I was also writing my thesis also we started going out on Christopher
Street Days which are the equivalent of pride parades in English language and
we started an collective which was called,

(48:41):
queer refugees for pride so that's how it all began so I started going with other activists.
Music.
Circles and joining them in

(49:04):
their fight and what i realized many people
were putting more stress on
the the issues that were.
Easy to resolve in our
eyes it was like oh we can resolve it but
they were unable to see the other perspective

(49:25):
that the bureaucracy or
the bureaucracy they can't do it because they
they see they have
just one way road they see only in one
direction and that's it everything on the side they don't
consider that and that's where i started
talking about the legal rights on the

(49:48):
european level and the
legal rights in the germany which are
given but not implemented that's how
it all began and together with the
rule of activists elaborate on on that
on rights that are given but not implemented about
the bureaucracy and the difficulty

(50:10):
of so we have eu directives
there are two basic eu
directives that tell all the
european member states that once
people enter your country you have to within a certain time period that's your

(50:31):
goodwill you have to decide what will be the specific or certain time period
you have to look if the person needs special.
Special protection rights and you have
to get to know that so in case
of women who are pregnant it's easy

(50:52):
to know that you get a test you can know that
they are single it's easy in determining age most of the time you can determine
it with your passport your id card or even doing some biological tests and with
your teeth and all that you can do that which germans usually don't do and then
And it's about if you have some sort of sicknesses and all.

(51:15):
There is a big group of people who are specially protected people.
And it also says sexual minorities based on sexual characteristics.
So in that regard, it's the lesbian and gay community and trans community and

(51:35):
bisexual community and also intersex community.
They are included. So once you determine that, when you're going to take their
interviews, you have to give them a person who can translate better,
who knows these situations,
who knows about the issues of LGBTI people, and who can also understand cultural

(51:58):
and also the regional background.
So all those kind of things. And the last thing it says, the other one,
you reception director, that you have to give them a reception center.
You have to put them in a reception center, which is close to the community
centers where they can go and they should get a separate room.

(52:24):
Or secured, it's said secured, placed where they can go to sleep,
where they can go to take shower, where they can go for toilet and all that thing. So that's there.
The law is there. And it took us from 2015 up until 2018, three years, all that fight.

(52:46):
In between, I got my job as well with the the LSVT, that the German government
had to say in words, first time ever, LGBTIQ community.
In one of the legal policies.
Before that, LGBTI people were never mentioned in the legal policies.

(53:08):
It was only in the EU directives. That's it.
So until 2018, from 2011 directives,
you gave directives in 2011 it took
until 2018 to get them
in the policies well would
you like to explain what the lsvd is and and

(53:29):
what what your role there is but uh yeah you've been doing with them there uh
so while i was while i was also as an activist activists fighting for rights
and going to different cities and talking about these issues with other activists.
I was not the only person who was doing that. It's a collective struggle that we had to go through.

(53:55):
I got my degree finished. I started working in a different organization.
And then I applied for a job at the LSVD as a project manager for for queer refugees.
So it was mostly about educating the German, we call it Einrichtung,

(54:16):
I don't know how to say it in English, the facilities.
The German facilities, especially asylum centers, about the situation of LGBTIQ
refugees and asylum seekers.
Seekers and build a group
of LGBTIQ asylum seekers who

(54:39):
are also activists and give them empowerment
workshops so that they can get their voice
across horizon like so that they can work according to the political and social
paradigm or framework sorry framework of Germany so that's what I did for one

(55:02):
and a half year up until 2020.
And after that, I became a certified,
educationist in these things, that how to talk to politicians,
how to talk to different facility managers, and how to talk to the communal
politicians, and people working in the.

(55:24):
Music.
Six seven years now yeah seven years and yeah what i what i got from what you
said basically i mean things seem to have improved those predictive facilities
have have been offered to to a lot of those minorities people are living in protection,

(55:52):
with certain delays which on a certain level aren't like are inevitable right,
I imagine there's still a long way to go and there are still a number of problems
that a lot of people have to face,
especially one issue that I have come across quite a lot,

(56:16):
working with refugees through AI, for example.
If you're applying for asylum, you tell them you're gay or something,
sometimes they just don't believe you.
Right sometimes uh yeah how how do you know how do we know you're not lying and uh there.
Things can things can can be difficult sometimes

(56:38):
right and it makes it a million times worse that
we both know of multiple people who lied because somebody
who wasn't lying told us that somebody else straight up told them
they were lying yeah i mean people yeah i
mean people also do lie and take advantage and all
that i mean how how do you navigate this
kind of thing is is there is there

(57:00):
any insight you can offer on that
point yes so every human being who is from the queer community is on different
level of their queer identity that is something that many people don't understand
or don't know about it. Let's put it that way.

(57:22):
And when it comes to the asylum seeking process and going through your interview,
the interviewer is there, there is a translator or somebody who is doing the verbal translation.
The law says if you are an LGBTI person or they They don't say LGBTI because

(57:43):
of your sexual orientation or your gender identity.
If you had to leave your country, there should be some sort of risk of not going back to your country.
And that risk should be to your life, your limbs. I don't know. It's still...

(58:04):
Yeah christian law i think that's
why still limbs and your freedom so
these three life limbs and freedom so people
have to actually not prove their identity
people have to prove because of
their identity these three things are

(58:24):
in danger and they will not get
protection from the states the society and
the family so those are the main things it's
not about your are gay it's not about your lesbian it's not
about your transgender nobody cares about
that the law doesn't care about that the law
is very clear that it has to be a problem

(58:46):
for your life your freedom up until last year the year before actually 2022
october there was a practice going on in Germany which was saying that people who couldn't put that.

(59:06):
Or who were not believed to be LGBTI and couldn't put their case forward properly,
believable they would have to go back and since 2022 we are like okay so if
somebody if I had applied asylum I would never get asylum status although I was raped or I was

(59:27):
beaten and everything happened to me that could happen under the under the sky anyways.
If since 2022 October, these people should not be sent back because if somebody
has run from the country and that country doesn't allow you being LGBTI,

(59:50):
that is the first strike on the freedom of LGBTI person.
That person needs to live freely and practice their sexuality or live their gender identity.
So since then many cases
have been revised and many people have got their

(01:00:10):
asylum status and it was such
a big fight which was and i
i understood as an activist that if i want to
achieve something i have to sit with people
on the table from one side and people
from other side like the queer community together
and the people who are not queer but

(01:00:32):
maybe they are queer we don't know and they
are working for the bureaucracy and for the politics to convince them
of the through the argumentation shouting is not going to bring anything i did
shouting for a couple of months after that i was like no it's not working in
germany they don't shout they don't they they They are not so happy about making

(01:00:53):
protests and demonstrations and all that. They don't like it.
It's a different culture.
They would be more interested like, let's go to the Garmayande,
let's go to the church, let's go to the community center, sit together, talk about the things.
These are our problems. These are the solutions that we put forward.
Do something, you politicians. Do something, you bureaucracy.

(01:01:15):
And then you can implement them.
So things are now getting better. And back to your question again.
So it's mostly about convincing the other person about your story.
There are people who can be very convincing and they are not LGBTI.
But there are people who are very convincing, and they also don't pay their taxes.

(01:01:39):
Yeah, and it goes the other way as well. I mean, there are people who might
not be very good at communicating and have very real stories and struggles.
I mean, it's something that I've come across numerous times and something that

(01:02:00):
especially especially like makes this problems this problem worse is the is the.
Is the the extra step
of translation right which you
know you you're sitting there with with

(01:02:21):
a person who's supposed to translate what you're saying in in
german and back to your language and a
lot of the time like the way
that that you formulate the things that you said are
not are not said one-to-one the
way that you said sometimes they're honest mistakes sometimes they're misinterpretations

(01:02:43):
like those things happen all the time sometimes yeah i mean i mean I was looking
into the page of the LSBD as well.
There's the issue of the lack of appropriate expressions and vocabulary when

(01:03:04):
it comes to talking about those issues,
so that the translation back and forth gets very fogged that way.
I don't know that. Yeah, that's also something that I've noticed in my own personal experience.
I mean, having some knowledge of the German language, having some presentation

(01:03:28):
skills, I think probably went a long way where others might have faced more difficulties.
Like you said, I mean, people don't know that.
People don't know the kinds of steps and complications that this communication

(01:03:48):
has to go through so that it can be evaluated. One...
One possible remedy to that would be some sort of representation,
if not a lawyer per se that is assigned to represent every seeker of asylum,

(01:04:12):
something of the sort that might cost less to the state, something like some
sort of representative that just makes sure that those things are going across the right way.
Would like might be
helpful i mean this this isn't a
problem only in the one direction also like you know

(01:04:34):
in in the other direction if the communication isn't
isn't up to standard then then people
are also going going to have have better opportunities
to to be fraudulent and so on yeah
yeah yeah i'd be interested to to
hear if if there are efforts being being made

(01:04:55):
in that direction and be the direction of giving
giving representation of that sort of of making the ways of communication more
clear and more direct and yeah i mean i know it's a difficult topic but are
we are we going forward there are we moving in the right direction.

(01:05:17):
I'm a very optimistic pessimistic person so,
Yes, many things are going in that direction. For example, the last time we
started Azulfa Fahan Beratung, we call it, it's like asylum process counselling.

(01:05:39):
So in every reception centre, and we have 66 reception centres in Germany,
almost in all the reception centres, you need to have an asylum process counsellor
from the state or from the civil society or the NGOs.
Who is going to tell you about your rights?
So one group of languages, they come, they talk about the basic rights.

(01:06:05):
And what we did in our workshops with the government and also with the other
non-government organizations and the facilities, we told them when people come,
talk to your translator and tell them that in Germany,
if you have it's a sentence that we
always tell them so now you're in Germany and you

(01:06:27):
have come to the asylum state center the reception center so if you have faced
violence and discrimination and fear of life and your freedom because of your
gender your race your religion your absence of religion,
your ethnic background,

(01:06:50):
your language background, your political motives, your sexual orientation,
your physical or mental health or anything, you can apply asylum here.
And if you have any issues because of that, you can come later to me and talk to me.
And you have around around 10 to 15 people always present there in the social

(01:07:14):
workers offices in a reception center and they talk about that and since then
when we do these kind of workshops after that we get a.
A lot of questions and a lot of also queries from the people.
Ah, you guys came here, we started implementing that, and now we have a lot
of people who come to us and talk about that.

(01:07:35):
Or they have came out as LGBTI, and now they want to talk about this,
and they want to know where are the reception, where are the community centers from LGBTI people.
They didn't know that they could talk about this in Germany.
So there are genuine cases. And one thing which people don't know,
I can tell you that also in the in the podcast is that regardless of who you

(01:07:59):
are you can always take one person of trust with you when you go for your interview
and that could be a person.
Better it is to understand both languages your
mother tongue and the German language so that when
the interpretation and the the translation

(01:08:22):
is going on nothing goes unsaid
nothing goes unheard everything is
being said and everything is being heard all those people
who do that miraculously the 99
of the time they get a positive reply from the
the office it's a

(01:08:42):
miracle that when you take a person of trust with
you you have less issues and
when you don't then you are usually and that's what
we have always encountered is
that the translation people people who
are working as translators they
don't translate everything they don't tell everything

(01:09:05):
or they tell you oh it's it's
disease it's psychological issue it's a sin it's whatever and you will not get
your asylum or protection in germany because of your gender identity or your
sexual orientation and it has happened so many times with people and the people

(01:09:27):
People who are translators,
they are not hired or they are not employees of the government.
They are freelancers who are hired for three, four hours and nobody takes the
responsibility of them.
So the fed the federal government the

(01:09:50):
the art of having a federal government in which you
give not all the all the
power to the center it's a
good thing i i really appreciate it but
on the other hand to dissolve the power
structures which is very common in germany they dissolve power
structures all the time they don't want to keep hierarchies and all that nobody

(01:10:13):
is going to be be responsible yeah i mean nobody will take the responsibility
because the power is not just with you or with me or with benjamin it's everywhere,
that makes sense yeah and on a certain level i mean i mean yeah more centralized responsibility,

(01:10:35):
does make sense especially when it comes to where the translators are come or
coming from what kind of processes they're going through and who they're alterable to.
Yeah, I mean, a model where we're working for four hours and going on to the
next job is certainly not...

(01:10:58):
It doesn't take the weight of the responsibility here as seriously as it should be taken.
They're not going to change the system we have had
so many discussions on this issue the the
basic authority who is responsible for migrants

(01:11:19):
and refugees in germany they're not going to change that
that's why they have in like put in the this clause that you can bring a person
of your trust because they say when it comes to the economic reasons we are
not going to to involve into the economics of translators as a government authority.

(01:11:43):
Because if you have sensitized translators in some way or other,
they are like, we will start favoritizing those people. And we don't want to favoritize anyone.
We just take one out of thousands and we're like, okay, send a person to us
who speaks this language.

(01:12:03):
Which they always tell the language bureaus and translation offices and such kind of people. Yeah.
A pessimistic perspective on a very difficult topic. I know. I know. It's hard.
But also, yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of things that we can take out of this.

(01:12:31):
Most importantly probably if somebody is applying for asylum.
To seek that kind of help, to find a person of trust who does speak the language,
to come in and make sure everything is going the way that it should be.
I mean, this is a very important point.

(01:12:54):
Is there a point you would like to add to that?
I feel like we have covered most of the points or all of the points that I wanted
to cover from the beginning of this and to be free to,
expound if you would like, if there are other points to asylum seekers that

(01:13:15):
you would like to put out there in terms of tips or help or anything like that
other than what we have already discussed,
the kind of things that people on the outside in German society in Western society
can do to show solidarity and so on.

(01:13:38):
I'll leave it to you to express what you have to express on this before we log out here.
I think Benjamin wants to ask something.
Go on, Ben. Hmm? Do you have a question? I mean, I heard about this very problem quite a long time ago.

(01:14:01):
The problem of translation? translation yeah the problem
of the problem of an ex-muslim or a
queer person going in and the translator actively
telling them that they don't deserve asylum because they're
sinful or they're psycho or they are a disease on this world anyways that that's
what they do yeah which in that case i'd really like to have it really seems

(01:14:26):
like a time for deportation proceedings against the a translator,
but maybe that's just me talking.
Yeah, it's not easy. It's not easy.
The deportation laws are very, very strict.
Germany has made laws about everything. Anyways.

(01:14:50):
Your point, I would say to the asylum seekers, wherever they go to seek asylum,
they should tell the true story.
And asylum is the last venue that a person should take it's not the first step
people are like in most of the western countries, not Canada anymore,

(01:15:14):
but in most of the western countries we have deficit of the working population
come to Germany come to Europe, come to USA,
come to other parts of the world find some job learn the language enjoy the
culture enjoy the food enjoy the atmosphere and live your life it's it's a one

(01:15:40):
in a million times gift that we could have gotten.
And and just look for venues what you can do and you can do things it's not
that you can't do anything.
You just have to look for things which might be fitting for you.
If someone else got a PhD admission, it's not that you also have to have a PhD

(01:16:04):
under all circumstances.
No, find something which maybe help other people as well and help you.
And the last thing, which many people have
have a different concept about seeking asylum is that protection is
given on the basis of a threat
to your life your limb and your freedom

(01:16:26):
not on the basis of economics don't ask
for protection on the basis of your economic reasons look for
jobs that what i i can give you as because seeking asylum is not easy asylum
process is one of the difficult things and most of the European countries find

(01:16:48):
something where there are so many visa processes.
Music.
Websites of different countries in different languages they
have it they are looking for people who can work there see

(01:17:10):
what you can do there and that's it and i'm
i'm the first person to give the the option of asylum to anyone i always tell
people apply asylum when all the doors are closed and you don't know how to
save yourself from looming disaster or from a looming danger that you might face in your country.

(01:17:34):
I absolutely agree a lot.
It's a difficult, undignified process that it's better to avoid if there's a way to avoid it.
Like you said, there are so many other venues to get to a different country
and start a new identified life there.

(01:17:57):
I just had to tell that to an an Indian guy who is married to a Ukrainian woman
who is now in a country in the EU,
that first of all, you don't want to take up an asylum position from somebody
who really needs it when you just want to be able to reunite with your wife
and you're not in danger in India.

(01:18:18):
And when you do that, it undermines other people claiming asylum when you're not in danger.
Plus, yes, it is a difficult process. with my process well also you're not gonna
get old it's gonna it's gonna be a whole waste,
everybody's time in any case yeah yeah thank

(01:18:38):
you so much i think i think this was incredibly helpful
hopefully you will take something away from this
yeah uh and uh not like uh have a better understanding of the perspective of
LGBT refugees in Germany and around the world yeah.

(01:19:05):
Music.

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Episode 19: A Trans-Continental Exchange - Queer Plight, Flight, And Rights

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 19: A Trans-Continental Exchange - Queer Plight, Flight, And Rights