Failure to Investigate Crimes against Transgender People

Several women in Kuantan told Human Rights Watch that they had been physically assaulted by an apparent vigilante group that targeted transwomen engaged in sex work.[108] In one particularly serious case, in July 2013, Lily, a transwoman from Thailand, was attacked and beaten into a coma.[109] Hafiza, a 32-year-old transgender sex worker and friend of Lily’s, said: “My friend was beaten into a coma and got 78 stitches. Nothing happened. The police found the stick that she was beaten with, and the knife used to assault her, but nothing happened. The police here don’t take care of us.”[110]

Hafiza said that she too had been attacked, with three or four of her friends, by a group of about eight men, one night in January 2012 when they were on the street looking for clients. Hafiza said one of the men hit her in the head with an iron rod, and stabbed her with the rod in the thigh. “I just wanted to die, but I fought back,” Hafiza said. “They were saying, ‘We want you to die.’… I launched a police report, but since the police don’t care about transgenders, they didn’t take it seriously. They didn’t do anything to investigate. They never invited us to the police station to identify any of the guys.”[111]

Hafiza said she was attacked again in late 2013 by a group of three men, one of whom hit her on the back with an iron rod. The police were passing by and managed to catch one of the suspects. However, Hafiza said:

I was called to the station to identify him. I talked to the police and wanted to bring a lawyer. Then the guy was just taken to Kuantan Court and was fined 400 RM (US $125), without a fair trial. That’s not worth what I’ve been through. So I feel angry. The court never called me as a witness. The police told me, ‘Just hold on, don’t get a lawyer.’ I feel it’s no use to reopen the case.[112]

There are occasional exceptions, in which police investigate crimes against transgender people. Nisha Ayub of Justice for Sisters told Human Rights Watch that at an organization where she had provided services to the transgender community, one of her clients, a mute, homeless transgender woman, suddenly disappeared in August 2009. Several days later, Nisha saw a picture of her client in a newspaper:

Her body was found in a riverbank somewhere in Kuala Lumpur. And it was devastating, because no one wanted to claim her body. So I went there to claim her body, to do her rites, to do everything for her. It was really heartbreaking, when you go to the morgue, to look at her lying there and know that she was killed.[113]

Police conducted investigations, and one suspect was prosecuted and convicted. [114]

But often, police respond to crimes against transgender people by blaming, harassing, or revictimizing them. Sharan, a transgender woman in Kuala Lumpur, said that in December 2011 she was abducted by a man who pulled his car over while she was walking down the street in Chow Kit. He talked her into his car by asking for her help in getting a package to another transgender woman. He then locked the doors and drove her out of Kuala Lumpur. Sharan asked why they were driving such a long distance:

He said, ‘I have 13 guys who are waiting to rip you apart. They are really hungry for sex. So just shut up and have sex with them. All you people are cursed to go through this. Who asked you all to change yourselves?’

He pulled over the car and took out three knives—a long hunting knife and two short knives. He was playing with a knife on my skin. He said he’d already killed seven [ethnic] Malay transgenders and I was his first Indian. I said, ‘What do you get out of this?’ He said, ‘I’m satisfied because you should not exist.’

After threatening to rape and kill Sharan, however, the man just robbed her of the contents of her handbag and left her by the road. Sharan went to Chow Kit police station to report the incident, and was referred to Dang Wangi police headquarters. Sharan described the crime to a police sergeant, providing the license plate and model of the car. However, as she was recounting the experience, the police sergeant stopped her and asked her for sex. Over the next several days, the police officer called her repeatedly, telling her he was ‘horny’ and asking, ‘When are you going to suck my dick?’ He did not provide her with any update on the case. According to Sharan:

After five days he stopped calling me and did not answer my calls. I called Dang Wangi station and they told me the case was closed a few days ago because of not enough evidence.[115]

Sharan said this was not an isolated incident. She had reported a previous house break-in and a case involving negligent driving, but, she said, ‘Every time I’ve had an encounter with the police, the police have always asked me for sexual favors.’[116]

Hezreen, a transgender woman in Penang, said that in May 2009, she was attacked by a man who followed her into her house, tore her shirt open, and stole her mobile phone, before running away. When Hezreen went to report the incident to the police, they suggested that the man had followed her into her house because she offered him sex. Hezreen filed a police report, but the police asked her to drop the case, and to her knowledge, never conducted investigations. She concluded, ‘I can’t trust the police. If anything happens, they blame the transgender. They accuse the victim.’ [117]

Nisha Ayub said that the case of her mute client who was killed—in which a suspect was convicted—was unusual, and that most cases are not even reported: ‘A lot of the trans community faces [violence], but a lot of them don’t want to report it. They feel that just because they are trans people, they’re not protected under the law.’[118]