Yahoo – AFP,
30 December 2017
Human Rights Watch has previously warned that discrimination against LGBT people was "pervasive" in Malaysia |
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.
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