Simran Snigdha was begging when a chance encounter helped get her off Bangladesh’s streets and realize her artistic dreams — one of a growing number of transgender people securing formal employment as the government boosts support for the marginalized community.
The Muslim-majority nation’s roughly 1.5 million transgender people have long faced discrimination and violence.
Kicked out from homes and communities, cut off from education and shunned by many employers, they often turn to begging, the sex trade or crime.
Photo: AFP
“I didn’t get the opportunity — I had to extort people ... and did prostitution,” Snigdha said at a garment factory in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.
The Bangladeshi government has implemented new laws, such as tax breaks, for firms hiring transgender people, helping pave the way for their integration into society.
Snigdha now works for a firm owned and run by another transgender woman, while pursuing her dreams of being a painter.
“I can now pursue my favorite work,” the 32-year-old said as she painted.
While she has found safety, Snigdha said there were scores more transgender artists in need of help.
“I pray they don’t go back to begging even for another day,” she said.
Like many of her peers, Snigdha fled her rural home in central Bangladesh for a transgender commune in Dhaka at 15 after facing abuse and rejection.
She lived under the protection of a guruma — a politically and socially connected transgender person who grants some economic security, but who can force residents into the sex trade, extortion or prevent them from getting an education.
Snigdha’s life changed in 2019 when she peered into a car window at a road crossing. Staring back was transgender factory owner Siddik Bhuyan Synthia — who asked her to join the business.
“In the past ... bullying [of transgender people] was the order, but [the] majority of the society are now our well-wishers,” Synthia said.
“The trans workers in my factory are very ordinary people. They don’t want to go to the dark businesses,” the 38-year-old said. “They prefer to have a social life just like any of us.”
Under Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a growing tolerance for the rights of sexual minorities has seen a raft of new laws.
Transgender people in 2013 were officially identified as a separate gender, and in 2018 they were allowed to register to vote as a third gender.
The government has also unveiled affirmative action schemes and a series of benefits.
As a result, several transgender-owned and run businesses — mostly beauty salons, but also small factories — have started popping up across Dhaka in the past few years.
Such firms were “unthinkable, even a few years back,” said Shale Ahmed, executive director of sexual minorities charity Bondhu.
Apon Akhter is one of those changing that expectation.
At her garment factory in Dhaka, she employs only transgender people.
“When I started ... people mocked me saying transgender people won’t be able to do productive work,” the 32-year-old guruma said. “They said we belong to the streets. I promised myself I’d prove them wrong.”
While Akhter acknowledges that her 25 employees’ salaries are not high, they are still studying — knocking down another barrier that the transgender community faces.
“Once you are out of homes, you end up without education, and lack of education means there is no way a company can employ you in a high-paying job,” said Rafid Saumik from charity TransEnd.
Akhter said many of her employees came to her after suffering and barely surviving for years, and her factory gives them a chance to pursue their education.
“I strongly want them to see the light they’ve been looking for in life because we only have each other,” she said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS