Human rights organization Amnesty sees the court’s decision as a breakthrough and demands the release of a Kuwaiti transgender from prison.
Arabia The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court has repealed a law criminalizing “imitation of the opposite sex”. The law was used to sue transgender people.
The matter is being reported by Britain broadcast BBC and the news agency AFP.
In 2007, the Kuwaiti parliament passed a law that could have put transgender people in jail and fined them. On Wednesday, however, the country’s constitutional court ruled that the law amendment violated the constitution.
Human Rights Organization Amnesty called the court ruling “a major breakthrough in transgender rights in the region”.
“The Kuwaiti authorities must also immediately end the arbitrary detention of transgender people and drop all charges and convictions against them under this transphobic law,” the organisation’s deputy director for the Middle East Lynn Maalouf said in a statement.
Organization also demanded a 40-year-old woman from Kuwait Maha al-Mutairin exemption. He received a two-year prison sentence under the now repealed law.
According to Al-Mutair’s lawyer, the authorities convicted the woman on the basis of social media videos. Among other things, al-Mutairi, who appeared in them, spoke about his transidentity and criticized the Kuwaiti government.
Al-Mutairi has also said he was raped and beaten by police while in a male prison for seven months in 2019.
The woman’s case got a Kuwaiti lawyer Ali al-Aryanin demand the repeal of the discriminatory law. Now the Constitutional Court agreed with the lawyer.
According to the BBC Kuwaiti criminal law still criminalizes extramarital sexual relations and interpersonal relationships.
In Oman, on the other hand, the expression of transgender sex is completely prohibited by law. In the UAE, Jordan and Lebanon, a man “disguised” as a woman commits a crime if she tries to get into a women-only space.
There are no laws written on gender identity in Saudi Arabia, but the principles of Islamic law are used to harass transgender and other gender minorities.
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