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LGBT-MALAYSIA-RIGHTS-TRANSGENDER
Malaysian transgender conversion plan sparks alarm
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30, 2017 (BSS/AFP) – A Malaysian state plans to run a
conversion therapy course aimed at transgender women, officials said
Saturday, sparking alarm among LGBT activists in the conservative Muslim-
majority country.
The course would run over several days next year after authorities had
completed a survey of the transgender population, a Terengganu state official
said.
Participation in the course would be voluntary, Ghazali said, adding that
the programme would include medical, psychological and religious experts, as
well as transgender women who have “returned to normal lives”.
“Transgender women are part of our society…. They are our
responsibility,” Terengganu executive council member Ghazali Taib told AFP.
“At the end, it is up to them to make a choice. The government’s concept is
not (to) force. (We) give them a path to make the best choices for their
lives,” he said.
A Human Rights Watch report in 2017 wrote that discrimination against LGBT
people was “pervasive” in Malaysia, where there are laws against sodomy, with
offenders facing jail time and whipping.
LGBT activists condemned the government’s plans.
“If you ask someone not to be themselves that will have an adverse impact
on the health and-well being of the person,” Thilaga Sulathireh, co-founder
of transgender activist group Justice for Sisters, said.
Leading transgender activist Nisha Ayub said courses such as these would
only deepen the community’s isolation.
“They’re looking more to… corrective therapy, which violates everyone’s
rights in so many ways,” she said.
“If (transgenders)…feel that they cannot change themselves, they will
feel like outcasts from society,” she added.
There are no official figures on transgenders in Malaysia, though a health
ministry document estimated that the country was home to about 24,000
transgender sex workers as of 2014.
BSS/AFP/IJ/1516 hrs