On a warm night in Swabi, music drifted across a market rooftop until the sound collided with a threat that’s become all too familiar: leave. For the transgender community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the latest push by local elders to expel them from the district is not a one-off flare of intolerance—it’s part of a widening fire.
“This is happening in Mardan, Peshawar, Bannu, Haripur—not just in Swabi,” rights activist Farzana Riaz said. “A movement of hatred for our community is growing across KP.”
Her voice holds both fatigue and defiance. For years, she has mediated between community representatives and power brokers—elders’ committees, police, administrators—only to watch the same accusations resurface with new force. “They say we are corrupting youth, but when parents cannot raise their children well, they blame us,” she says. “This is a rotten idea of a broken society. Nobody has the authority to tell us to vanish from our own streets and homes.”
A Community Under Suspicion—and Attack
The community’s fear is not abstract. Since 2015, 195 transgender people have been killed in KP, according to activists, with 11 more murdered in 2025, most of them in Peshawar. Each killing is a rupture that ripples outward—friends changing homes in the night, dancers avoiding bookings, mothers and sisters sending whispered warnings. These are not just numbers; they are lives folded into silence.
Meanwhile, the language deployed against trans persons remains brutally reductive: “vulgar,” “obscene,” “corrupting.” Riaz pushes back against the smear with a simple question: If we vanished, would vulgarity vanish too—or would society finally have to confront its ‘dirty realities’ without a scapegoat?
Livelihoods on Trial
Much of the current agitation targets dance performances—their most visible source of income, now framed as a menace to “youth” and “family values.” Community members insist they respect local norms and will welcome dignified alternatives. “If the government provides us jobs, we are ready to stop dancing at functions,” they said in a video message, while warning elders not to take the law into their own hands. The plea is pointed: you cannot criminalize our livelihoods without offering us any path to survive.
Parents featured in viral clips allege their sons spend money at performances and blame trans entertainers for “destroying families.” Yet the same videos glide past harsher truths—drug and liquor sales, coercion, and economic despair—complex forces that are far harder to tackle than publicly shaming an already vulnerable minority.
Police in the Middle—Or on the Side?
Mistrust of law enforcement runs deep. Riaz alleges the Swabi police have been complicit in efforts to push the community out—raids, arrests, beatings. Images of two injured trans persons, reportedly detained among some 200 arrests in a recent case, underscore the fear coursing through the community.
Police reject this characterization. DSP Ijaz Khan Abazai says the flashpoint was a rooftop event with loud music in a crowded market. Officers, he says, responded to complaints: “We had to arrest people because otherwise the locals would have blamed us for any mishap… There is no decision to expel the community.” He describes the police as mediators who agreed with the elders that events should be held at locations where others are not disturbed. He denies violence: “No transgender person has been beaten… We presented them in court the very next day.”
DPO Zia Ud Din Ahmed echoes this: “It is not about transgender at all. Whoever commits a crime is answerable to the law, whether male, female, or transgender… They are equal citizens, and we are here to ensure their protection.”
Between the community’s testimony and the police’s assurances lies a chasm familiar to anyone who has lived at the margins: process on paper, pain on the ground. The community has filed a writ petition against the KP IG. The police say they welcome legal scrutiny. Justice, for now, sits in the uncomfortable space between them.
Law, Paper, and the Street
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, affirms what should be obvious in a democracy: the right to reside, move freely, and earn a livelihood without discrimination. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) reinforced this on September 14, 2025, condemning reports that an 11-member committee in Swabi sought to expel transgender persons: “Such actions are unconstitutional, discriminatory, and amount to incitement to violence… No citizen can be deprived of the right to reside, work, or earn a livelihood anywhere in Pakistan based on gender identity.”
But laws without implementation are like a shelter without a roof. When open threats circulate on social media, when neighbors cheer raids as moral victories, when committees convene to decide who belongs, rights feel fragile. Dignity cannot depend on the goodwill of a crowd.
How Hate Goes Viral
The campaign against trans persons is not only local; it’s algorithmic. Short videos—earnest, angry, triumphant—flatten human lives into “content.” Strangers point to dancers and declare them “dirt.” Misinformation, moral panic, and performative outrage mingle easily online, turning complex social anxieties into a single, disposable villain. The slur trends; the person bleeds.
Yet online, too, there is resistance: trans activists naming their dead, mothers defending their children’s right to exist, lawyers quoting the constitution, ordinary people calling out cruelty. Hate travels fast; courage travels anyway.
What Justice Looks Like—Beyond Promises
If KP is to choose dignity over exclusion, outrage must be matched with action:
- Guarantee safety in practice, not only in statements. Enforce the law against threats, harassment, and violence, whoever the perpetrators.
- Offer real livelihoods. Create pathways to employment, training, and social protection so that endings (of dance work) can be paired with beginnings (of dignified jobs).
- Protect lawful expression. Cultural events should be regulated by neutral public standards (noise, location, permits), not by prejudice.
- Hold institutions accountable. Transparent inquiries into allegations of police misconduct build trust; so do public updates and independent oversight.
- Reclaim the narrative. Counter online hate with verified information, human stories, and community-led dialogue that emphasizes shared values of hospitality, honor, and protection of the vulnerable—core Pakhtun virtues.
“We Are Part of This Society”
At its heart, this struggle is about who gets to be visible in the place they call home. The community’s message to elders is not an act of defiance but of belonging: Look at us from the perspective of humanity. They are asking not for special treatment, but for the ordinary miracle of citizenship—to walk their streets without fear, to work without shame, to live without being told to disappear.
When a society chooses scapegoats, it postpones its real work. It is easier to police a rooftop than to rebuild trust. Easier to cancel a performance than to confront the economies of addiction, the failures of parenting, the weight of unemployment, the hypocrisies that hide in plain sight. But progress demands the harder choice.
The elders in Swabi will meet again, we are told, to discuss “removing” trans persons from the district. Here is a better agenda: remove the threats, not the people. Remove impunity, not identity. Remove the comfort of easy blame, and replace it with the rigor of justice.
Because the measure of a community is not how loudly it praises virtue, but how steadfastly it protects those most at risk. And tonight, in KP, protection begins with a simple, overdue recognition:
They live here too.