Sometimes We Forget

What it is like being trans* in other countries around the world; especially in conservative religious countries.

Iranian transgender refugee struggles for acceptance
Eight months ago transgender woman Tannaz Mehraban came to Canada to start a new life
By Gavin Fisher
CBC News
Posted: Aug 03, 2014

Tannaz Mehraban woke in the middle of the night to find her brother standing next to her. He told her they had to leave the house — immediately. Her family was going to kill her the next day.

Mehraban, who was only 13 at the time, had recently been kicked out of school for being someone who looked like a boy but dressed as a girl.

“Because this was a great tragedy for my family — I had destroyed my family’s reputation in the community — my family wanted to kill me,” Mehraban said, speaking in Farsi through an interpreter.

This was just one of many hardships that Mehraban had to face as a transgender woman in Iran. After being persecuted her whole life Mehraban, now 38, arrived in Canada as a refugee eight months ago. She currently resides in Burnaby.

In countries like Iran, Kuwait, and Indonesia it can be fatal for being trans*. In Kuwait roving bands police routinely arrest trans-people and in Indonesia trans-people daily worry about being attacked by roving bands of religious zealots or arrested by the police.

And it is not just confined to the Middle East in Greece last year there were reports about trans-people being rounded up as “undesirables” and held in detention centers.