In the continued violence against transgender community, unidentified gunmen killed another two transgender persons in the Serai Naurang town of Lakki Marwat on 09.11.2025. The fate of their justice shall remain elusive and the killers will remain unidentified.
Violence against Pakistan’s transgender community has become so commonplace that outrage now struggles to pierce through the country’s walls of indifference.
Behind the veneer of official silence lies a grim reality: relentless abuse, social exclusion, and unchecked killings. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone, 267 cases of violence against trans persons were recorded over the past five years.
Out of these, only one resulted in a conviction. One conviction in the face of hundreds of attacks. This single number captures the state’s abandonment of a community forced to live in fear and humiliation.
The figures are stark, but they do not begin to convey the daily horror faced by transgender Pakistanis. Each case represents not just a statistic, but a human life marked by beating, sexual violence, and systemic rejection.
And yet, even as blood continues to spill, the institutions that should provide protection remain passive or complicit. The message from both state and society is unambiguous: transgender people are disposable.
The Jirga’s call for expulsion
If the violence on the streets wasn’t enough, the recent decision of a jirga in Swabi exposed the entrenched cruelty at the cultural and communal level.
The jirga decreed that all transgender persons should be expelled from the district. Their crime? Participating in a music programme where clashes with the police were reported.
Two trans persons were arrested, but the punishment declared by the jirga went far beyond policing—it was a sweeping expulsion order, an attempt to erase an entire community from public life.
Such criminal “verdicts” issued in the name of tradition underline a deeper rot. They are not isolated aberrations but reflect a collective mindset that sees transgender people as unworthy of basic rights.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the decision, reminding the nation that no one can be deprived of the right to reside or earn a livelihood based on gender identity. But condemnations alone do not stop the persecution.
A culture of impunity
Impunity defines the transgender experience in Pakistan. The record in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is illustrative: hundreds of cases filed, almost none leading to justice.
Survivors, fearing further violence or police harassment, often withdraw complaints or accept out-of-court settlements. Legal protections exist in theory, but in practice, law enforcement officers are often seen not as allies but as adversaries.
The transgender community’s distrust of the police is not unfounded.
Reports of harassment during raids, denial of protection, and humiliating treatment at police stations have further alienated the very people who are most vulnerable.
When the law fails repeatedly, violence becomes self-sustaining, emboldening perpetrators who know that punishment is unlikely.
Murder on the streets
The bodies discovered in Karachi’s Memon Goth area tell the same story of systemic neglect.
Three transgender people were found shot dead by unidentified assailants. Their deaths add to a long list of killings that rarely make it to court, much less end in conviction.
Amnesty International has warned of a concerning rise in violence against trans people in Pakistan, and Karachi’s streets continue to bear witness.
These killings are not random acts of brutality—they are the end result of a system that tolerates violence against a community already pushed to the margins.
Estimates suggest there are half a million transgender citizens in Pakistan, yet they remain among the most unprotected and most targeted groups in society.
Biases and exclusion
The systemic violence against transgender people cannot be separated from the everyday biases that keep them excluded from economic and social life.
Employment opportunities are scarce. Prejudice keeps them out of the mainstream workforce, leaving many with no choice but to survive through sex work, dance performances, or begging. Each of these avenues exposes them to further exploitation and violence.
The contempt is not confined to workplaces or homes. It is woven into the state’s own laws and policies.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, once carried the promise of change, particularly through its recognition of self-identity.
Yet even this limited safeguard was rolled back when the Federal Shariat Court rejected key provisions, stripping trans persons of the right to self-recognition.
For a community already battling violence and stigma, the state’s retreat from recognition reinforced the message that their existence remains conditional and contested.
A nation moving backwards
While parts of the world move toward acceptance, Pakistan appears to be moving backwards.
International studies paint a bleak picture. A 2023 report in The Lancet noted that 90% of transgender people in Pakistan face physical assaults.
This figure is staggering, pointing to a society where violence is the norm rather than the exception. In such an environment, to speak of rights, dignity, or equality rings hollow.
The transgender community’s isolation is not just social—it is existential. Each day is lived under the threat of humiliation, attack, or death. And each day, the state’s indifference makes that violence easier to carry out.
Officialdom responds with platitudes or occasional token gestures, but the lived reality of trans persons remains that of bodies discarded on streets, livelihoods criminalised, and humanity denied.
From policy to persecution
The contradiction between policy and practice reveals the depth of hypocrisy. On paper, there are initiatives meant to safeguard transgender rights.
Yet the lived experience is defined by expulsion orders from jirgas, police harassment, street killings, and judicial rollback of protections. This duality only deepens the sense of betrayal.
To proclaim inclusion while allowing exclusion to dominate everyday life is a cruel paradox.
Trans people hear one set of promises in official speeches but face another set of realities when they step outside their doors.
The state, by failing to protect them, legitimises the violence of the mob, the prejudice of employers, and the silence of neighbours.
A community abandoned
The relentless violence against Pakistan’s transgender community reveals more than social prejudice—it reveals the moral failure of the nation.
The numbers themselves—267 recorded cases in KP, a single conviction, three fresh murders in Karachi—are chilling. But the deeper truth is found in the silence that follows.
Each attack, each killing, each expulsion order is met with little more than fleeting headlines before disappearing from public memory.
The victims are left to bury their dead, heal their wounds, and endure the same cycle again. The rest of society looks away, unwilling to confront the ugliness of its own prejudice.
A mirror to the nation
The transgender community’s suffering is not a side issue. It is a mirror reflecting the state of justice, governance, and human dignity in Pakistan.
When a community of half a million citizens can be denied safety, stripped of identity, excluded from work, and murdered without consequence, it is not just their rights that are in jeopardy—it is the very idea of equal citizenship.
The persistence of such violence, coupled with near-total impunity, speaks of a nation that has abandoned its most vulnerable. In every unpunished attack, everybody discarded by the roadside, and every jirga order of expulsion, Pakistan’s failure is laid bare.