‘My family tried to burn me’: LGBTQ Kashmiris suffers over COVID | Coronavirus News Plague

Srinagar, Kashmir operated by India – For the 36-year-old Sweety, being a fertile woman is “a curse”.

Hailing from a remote Indian village in Kashmir, Sweety was 20 years old when she realized she was transgender.

In those days, living with a stepmother was not an easy task in difficult situations. But being the last child of his parents and “much loved”, his gender did not cause much trouble in the first place.

However, his fortune was short-lived. In 2016, Sweety lost both of her parents within four months.

With the plague of forced entry into the coronavirus, meetings of LGBTQ groups have stopped. But the home is not a safe haven for the oppressed.

‘They begged me to leave the house’

By sticking one day in March this year, Sweety put herself at risk of meeting a colleague in the area.

“When I returned home after the meeting, my brother beat me. He choked me, I felt breathless. They tied my legs and then started beating me in the legs with a stick, ”he said.

“Even children in the house began to cry. He only stopped until my brother-in-law intervened. My belongings were thrown away, and they asked me to leave home. ”

After being abandoned by her older brother, “perhaps to retain their culture”, as she put it, Sweety now lives alone and manages the crisis, facing all enemies.

“For my family, my presence is a curse. He wants me to die early because he sees me as having a problem, “he told Al Jazeera as he prepared his meal in the dining room.

Sweety said she was so badly injured that she could not walk properly for several weeks.

With travel restrictions and parties, local LGBTQ residents were forced to live with their often abused relatives.

Torture intensified during the electronic era

The crisis has been exacerbated by the lengthy release in Kashmir, beginning in August 2019 when a special post was vacated by the Indian government.

The six-month security shutdown was quickly followed by the COVID-19 epidemic that erupted in March last year. This year, the second deadly wave of the virus also saw another recession in the resort.

According to the 2011 census, there are more than 4,000 LGBT members in the region, though the number may be higher than most believe they do not want to talk about sex.

The villagers say the closure saw violence and harassment, and many reports of their harassment surfaced in the area.

The temporary struggle against Indian rule has also covered their plight, many of whom have been abandoned by their families and subjected to physical, verbal and sexual abuse.

They say that they regularly receive pornography, unsolicited sexually explicit images, sexually explicit messages from strangers, and sexually explicit messages. They are also threatened with publishing their name and photos on TV shows.

‘My family is trying to burn me down’

Hibba, 28, from the capital, Srinagar, identifies herself as his wife. He also said he was “severely mentally and physically abused” by his family, which “grew worse during the closure”.

He also said he was beaten and often locked up in a room with no food.

“My family tried to burn me down. They gave me hot spoons on my body, ”he said.

“Sometimes I wish I could just lose my life, and I would want to hide my life. Maybe the wounds will heal but the wounds in my life and my mind will not heal. I have already died three times and I long for this torture to solve my problems forever. ”

Hibba said he had tried to commit suicide several times but would “miraculously survive”.

Hibba said the problem was exacerbated by his inability to meet his friend at the time he left. “If I had met him, I would not have faced all this violence,” he said.

Aijaz Bund, the first and perhaps the only LGBTQ activist in Kashmir, said there had been a dramatic increase in violence against the community since its incarceration in 2019.

“LGBTQ + people in Kashmir have been experiencing violence, but at the right time they were running away from their families for a while. They like to go to work and so on,” he said.

“But for the past two years, they’ve been forced into almost 24 × 7 violence.”

The Bund’s non-profit organization, the Sonzal Welfare Trust, is committed to doing good to the LGBTQ community in a predominantly Muslim area. It is said that the number of songs has increased since the closure.

“We receive two or three calls a month but at the moment the number of calls is over 200,” he said.

Last year, the district administration announced a pension plan in which each overweight person was entitled to receive 1,000 rupees ($ 14) per month.

But the law is still in force, with many questioning whether the money is enough to last a month.

The NGOs that work for these people are few and far between while the Kashmiri rights activists, fearing intimidation among themselves, are not talking about their rights.

Muskaan rested on the banks of the Veshaw River 10 hours after the operation [Zubair Amin/Al Jazeera]

In such cases, there are some LGTBQ members who have been able to receive the adoption by their families. Muskaan is one of them.

For the 26-year-old transgender, things changed when apple seeds, which bring in more money to her family, were destroyed for three years by pests and hail.

‘Everyone now respects him’

When the couple began to get into debt and debt, Muskaan in 2017 decided to self-regulate.

“When we had no food left, I started making matches. I also sang and danced at money weddings, ”he said.

“When I returned home with money in my hand, the violence in my family did not go away. Soon I began to make all the decisions for the family. ”

From being forced to drop out of school in the face of bullying and harassment by other students, Muskaan has come a long way. He traveled extensively throughout the area in search of couples and couples who wanted sports.

“To a parent, every child is the same, and we love them the same. At first, I was shocked by what my neighbors and relatives did and I took her to a traditional healer, “Muskaan Hajira’s mother told Al Jazeera.

“But the way Muskaan worked to raise a family, everyone now respects him. Men or women were God’s will and being a mother, I can’t deny Him. ”

But Muskaan faced another challenge in April this year when the region was disrupted and marriages were suspended. He was left unemployed when all his money ran out.

“We were on the verge of starvation. Marriages are suspended and I have to find another way to earn money, ”he told Al Jazeera.

He now works as a miner who extracts sand, rocks and other materials from a Veshow river bed near his Yaroo village in Kulgam, about 80km (50 miles) from Srinagar.

“It is a daunting task. My body was not made for this. I had to work 10 hours a day in hot weather to make 1,400 rupees [$19], ”He said, adding that the job was the only way to ensure that his family did not abuse him.

New Delhi sociologist Adfar Shah told Al Jazeera that being an LGBTQ person in Kashmir was “hell”.

“We unknowingly discriminate against these people and call them homosexual, ugly and unimportant,” he said.

Islamic scholar Maulana Bilal Ahmad Qasmi told Al Jazeera that Islam does not discriminate on the basis of gender.

“In Islam, human rights activists have the same rights as homosexuals but it is unfortunate that these people should be persecuted by all races at the hands of families and the whole community,” he said.