“When I was little, I used to review my feminine mannerisms in the mirror and try to correct them,” says Gavin Chow, (30 years old, Kuala Lumpur). From a young age, the LGBTI rights activist was aware of the burden of being a gay man in Malaysia, where consensual same-sex relationships are a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounces the discrimination promoted by the Government itself towards the LGBTI community, in a report published earlier this month. The persecution of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity in this country contemplates social rejection and practices of conversioneven the bars of a prison.
Hate speech towards sexual conduct cataloged against the “order of nature” has been fed for years, even in the highest levels of government. “When I heard about the case of Ibrahim Anwar (former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia) in the early 2000s, I realized that being gay here meant becoming a criminal,” says Chow. Anwar was accused of sodomy [práctica de la penetración anal] and abuse of power in 1998, and ended up in prison for six years, in the midst of a smear campaign against his main political detractor, Mahatir Mohamad, to remove him from power. Anwar’s sodomy charge was dropped in 2004, but the persecution of the LGBTI community did not stop.
Since then, when Chow was just a child, the repression towards any sexual expression other than heterosexuality began to escalate. In 2004, when Anwar was released, HRW looked at the reality of the LGBTI community in the country and launched a first study on the situation. “In Malaysia, discrimination has many levels. There are national laws that criminalize sexual conduct and gender expression. Regional and religious laws, and a kind of generalized social hatred, ”explains Kyle Knight, HRW researcher on LGBTI issues. The religious laws that Knight mentions obey the sharia (Islamic regulation), and apply to 60% of the country’s population, which belongs to the Muslim community.
The most recent report entitled I don’t want to change myself (I don’t want to change), published by HRW and Justice For Sisters –a campaign promoted by activists in the country, which monitors human rights violations against the LGBTI community–, states that for ten years, the Federal Department of Islamic Affairs, known as JAKIM, has promoted camps called mukhayyamin which practices of conversion, which aim to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of the participants. In 2018, JAKIM boasted that 1,450 people had “recovered from the disease” through these camps. Furthermore, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob reinforced this discourse in June 2021, announcing that 1,733 LGBTI people had attended these programs since their inception.
In 2018, the Federal Department of Islamic Affairs boasted that 1,450 people had “recovered from the disease” through sexual orientation and gender identity ‘conversion’ camps
The emotional traces of these practices are difficult to erase. “One of my friends went through a conversion process in a church years ago, and he told me that he is still unable to masturbate,” says Gavin. “Many do not want to share their stories so as not to relive the trauma,” adds Knight, who together with the Justice for Sisters team collected more than 70 testimonies from people affected by the mukhayyam. To deal with this hostile landscape, Chow created PLUHO (People Like Us Hang Out, which means “people like us get together”) in the company of other activists six years ago. “We wanted to create a space of positive affirmation for the community, in response to the climate of tension in Malaysia. In addition, we hoped to contribute to access to mental health services”, emphasizes the young man of Chinese descent. “I don’t want my friends or friends of my friends to die from suicide any more,” stresses the activist, who recalls learning about the case of 14 community members who had killed themselves during a PLUHO meeting. “Statistics are not made on these deaths,” he lamented.
For trans people, the pressure and rejection intensify. The State criminalizes them by imposing punishments on “men who pose as women” according to the sharia. “My situation is privileged compared to the transgender community, which bears the brunt of discrimination,” says Chow. Not surprisingly, the report prepared by HRW and Justice For Sisters begins by citing the case of Nur Sajar, a trans cosmetic businesswoman who suffered persecution from the State last year. Najar had to flee to Thailand in search of refuge to escape prison and public humiliation in her country, where the authorities designated more than a hundred men to capture her. According to the report, Malaysian authorities alleged that “the massive deployment of law enforcement and diplomatic wrangling to force her back to Malaysia was not aimed at ‘punishing’ her but rather ‘educating her’.
The weight of Muslim beliefs is a resource used by the Government to insist on a narrative of violence towards the community. “These violations cannot be justified solely on the grounds of religion. Some neighboring countries that also have a Muslim population are pointing in other directions”, highlights Chow, who cites the examples of Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, where there are also practitioners of Islam, and where governments have made progress in terms of LGBTI rights. For example, Homosexuality is no longer treated as a medical disorder in Vietnam. –The WHO eliminated homosexuality from the list of psychiatric ailments in 1990– and Singapore is one step away from decriminalizing sex between same-sex couples. “I hope that the turn in the conversations of the nearby countries will contribute to education here in Malaysia,” she ditches. The tone of her voice on the other end of the phone, however, doesn’t convey much hope. Knight, for his part, trusts in the activism of people like Chow and in the mutual support among the population to face arbitrariness. “Malaysia’s LGBTI community is strong and ready to fight for their rights, no matter how hard the government tries to suppress them,” he concludes.
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