A transgender person, who was one of the organisers of the ‘People’s Climate March’ that took place under the banner of the Karachi Bachao Tehreek (KBT) in Karachi on Sunday, was allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted by some persons looking to “extract” information about the march on Saturday night, the Dawn reported.
The alleged incident was disclosed by the KBT — a campaign seeking an end to the demolition of Karachi’s working-class settlements and markets — via a tweet, detailing that one of the members of the December 12 People’s Climate March organising committee in Karachi was allegedly picked up and subjected to torture and rape on the night of December 11, the report said.
“We organised a People’s Climate March in Karachi. The night before our protest, we held an organising committee meeting. One of our organisers, a trans woman, was abducted on her way home. She was tortured and raped,” the KBT said in a tweet.
It suggested that the police were involved in the violence against the transgender person and did so to “extort” information about the march from the member.
“It is worth noting that this police violence was disproportionately directed towards a trans woman – that sexual violence was weaponised against one of the most vulnerable members of the organising team, so that information about the march and its programme could be extorted from her,” it added.
Shahzadi Rai, the Gender Interactive Alliance’s (GIA) ‘violence case manager’, told Dawn that the KBT activist “was picked up on her way to home near the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and was kept in illegal custody for three hours where she was tortured and raped before being released near the matric board office in Nazimabad”.
