Late last week a transgender woman in Klang was found dead, with multiple injuries, leaving police to launch a murder investigation leading to the arrest of four young suspects yesterday.
Aged between 16 and 21 years old, local police have claimed that the brutal incident was over an attempted mobile phone theft, and nothing to do with the fact that the victim was a member of the LBGTQ+ community.
However, local activists are not taking the incident lying down, and are urging authorities to investigate whether or not a hate crime was committed, after a spate of anti-LGBTQ+ incidents throughout the country.
Internationally recognized transgender rights activist Nisha Ayub is not mincing any words over the situation: “This is a hate crime,” she said.
“Would these youths act in such a violent way if she was not a transgender person? This is all due to the hatred that has been created,” she told Reuters, elaborating that many crimes are not even reported to police.
A climate of fear cannot be denied of late: In August of this year, a group of five men attacked a transgender woman in Seremban, leaving her with horrific injuries that included several broken ribs, cuts, bruising, and a ruptured spleen, after the attackers used a piece of wood and plastic pipe to beat her.
Earlier in the month, two portraits of LGBTQ+ activists were removed from a non-political photo exhibit celebrating Malaysians at the behest of government officials, sparking wide outcry that the community was being sidelined by the new government. Worries of intolerance continued after an unprecedented caning sentence of two women in Terengganu over “attempted lesbian sex,” and a feeling of dread has been palpable since Prime Minister Mahathir declared to a Thai press conference that LGBTQ+ values are not of national concern: “Our value system is not the same as the West,” he said.
Throw in a grossly transphobic snack food ad that somehow made it past regulators, despite encouraging violence towards members of the LGBTQ+ community, and there’s little wonder that Coconuts KL declared that the new government was failing a fair portion of voters who expected a positive change in extending human rights to all.
Progressives are asking for hate crime laws to be extended to protect members of the LGBTQ+ community, with attacks targeting sexual orientation and gender identity being included in legislature.
Police have not commented further on the case.
