Transgender people & sexual minorities in SL face discrimination; HRW

Transgender people and others who do not conform to social expectations about gender face discrimination and abuse in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 63-page report, “‘All Five Fingers Are Not the Same’: Discrimination on Grounds of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in Sri Lanka,” finds that people who don’t conform to gender norms face arbitrary detention, mistreatment, and discrimination accessing employment, housing, and health care. The government should protect the rights of transgender people and others who face similar discrimination, Human Rights Watch said.

“All Sri Lankans, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, should be able to exercise their rights without discrimination or abuse,” said Yuvraj Joshi, Gruber fellow in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “While the government has begun to address these issues, it should urgently seek to eliminate laws and practices that discriminate on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 61 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people in four Sri Lankan cities. Sixteen of those interviewed, most of them transgender or men who have sex with men, said they had suffered sexual or physical abuse by the police. More than half of this group said that police had detained them without cause at least once.

Sri Lankan law currently provides no clear path to changing legal gender, HRW said. Transgender people are rarely able to obtain a national identity card and other official documents that reflect their preferred name and gender, exposing them to constant and humiliating scrutiny. “Krishan,” a 40-year-old transgender man in Colombo, said that the first question in job interviews is about his gender, not his qualifications.

The Health Ministry, working with the National Human Rights Commission, has proposed a procedure through which transgender people could change the gender on their documents after a diagnosis from a mental health professional. While that would be a step forward, the authorities should allow people to change their legal gender on all documents without requiring psychiatric diagnosis or medical treatment or procedures, Human Rights Watch said.