Stolpersteine in Brussels for Berek and Pesah Swiatlowski. Bella Swiatlowski, Public domain.
As a Brit who travels to and from mainland Europe on a regular basis, there’s something of a sobering reminder to be found beneath your feet as you walk around European towns and cities. Every now and then you’ll see a small brass plaque in the pavement, with a name, some dates, and sometimes a place name on it. These are the so-called stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, memorials for the victims of the Holocaust in front of their former homes, and each one bears the name of a Jew or other victim.
Brits and Americans are taught about the Holocaust, in schools, through the testimonies of survivors, and through television and film. Many of us had grandparents who fought or otherwise served in the second world war, and among those were a significant number who saw its effects for themselves. But it didn’t happen at home in the UK or America, so for those of us born long after it happened it still remains difficult to comprehend.
It happened on this quiet street in a prosperous town. Christian Michelides, CC BY-SA 4.0
In considering the people whose names appear on those stumbling stones, the horror of it all becomes far more immediate than it does when watching a historical documentary. It happened here on this quiet street in a prosperous town, this is not the place of horror far to the east which we’ve been taught to associate with the Holocaust. By the time the Nazis rounded up their victims it was far too late for anybody in Germany or the occupied countries to protest, and of those courageous people who did take action to save Jews from capture, many were themselves caught and sent to their deaths.
The question that’s probably in the minds of most people when struggling to comprehend the Holocaust is this: How could it have happened? The answer doesn’t come in the final act of the victims being rounded up and exterminated, but years earlier. In the relentless Nazi propaganda which polarised an entire population to see Jews as subhuman, but also in the refusal of so many people to understand what was happening. The message from the numbers of Jewish refugees sounding the alarm bells throughout the 1930s was largely ignored, because people preferred instead to believe that it couldn’t be that bad. You are left wondering, how many of the victims of the Holocaust could have been saved, had the countries outside Germany done more about the plight of German Jews in the 1930s?
The demonisation of transgender people in right-wing American media has been ceaseless.
Given the above it’s not difficult to draw parallels between Germany in the 1930s and the actions of the right wing of US politics here in the 2020s. The demonisation of transgender people in right-wing American media has been ceaseless, and the legislative programme of Republican state lawmakers has demonstrated their resolve to wipe us out in their territories. They are chillingly open about their plans for us under a future Republican presidency, in which near-dictatorial powers would be seized at a federal level to override lawmakers in Democratic so-called safe states. Meanwhile, as in the 1930s, those not directly involved either within America or in other countries choose to ignore the plight of American transgender people, either because they don’t believe it will happen that way, or because they simply don’t care.
So this is why we’re sounding the alarm for trans Americans. There is no magic time machine with which we can go back to 1931 and warn about the Holocaust, but there is still time for transgender Americans to get out. When this is all over, we would prefer not to carry the guilt of having stood idly by while it was happening.
Though our operations over the last year have had a focus in the developing world, the situation closer to home for us in countries such as the USA has been of significant concern. An inevitable descent into some form of fascism seems all-too-possible, and since we trans people are the scapegoat of the moment it’s not difficult to see where this is going. In case any Americans remain in doubt we’d like to direct them to the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 blueprint for a newly elected Republican president. Entitled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, it sets out a chilling path in which a president gains near-dictatorial powers through abuse of the federal system backed up by a supreme court packed with their yes-men. They can then criminalise being transgender at the federal level and erase us from society, effectively making any “safe states” irrelevant.
Over the past year then, we’ve urged people to not wait for that end, but to get out while they still can. Our biggest concern is that if it’s all left to the last minute as a newly-elected far-right President prepares for his inauguration, only the wealthy trans people will succeed in escaping and the rest will be left for the Republicans to come after. Unlike many of our passengers who will be denied access to international travel based simply on their nationality, transgender Americans still have one of the most powerful passports in the world. They have options, something that will disappear abruptly when they are criminalised and their documentation is invalidated.
The Only Luxury You Have Is A Bit Of Time
The trouble is, we can only keep saying this and urging people to plan their exit, we can’t airlift every individual trans American to safety as we simply don’t have the resources. We’ve taken some grief for this, as people shoot the messenger rather than listening to the message. It comes down to this, getting out in some form is not out of reach when you have the luxury of time, but as the time becomes more limited, so does the chance of escaping.
There’s a lot of nationalistic guff about this document representing freedom, but curiously for trans people escaping a far-right apocalypse, it means just that. Cytis, CC0.
As a first step, if you haven’t already, get yourself a passport. Only 37% of Americans have one, don’t be one of the 63% who are stuck in a fascist society with no way out. It costs $130, which we know isn’t a sum everyone will have handy, but here’s where the time comes in. You have the luxury of time, use some of it to get that cash together. When it’s the document that will save your life, isn’t it worth some sacrifices to save for it?
So you’re getting a passport, what now? Your whole life should become an exercise in planning for a future as an immigrant somewhere else. What are your skills, what do you have to offer another country who might take you? Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to work in finance or computer programming to emigrate, a huge number of countries have skill shortages in much more mundane areas. If you can’t find one of those visas there are digital nomad visas, or even ancestry visas if Grandad came from the old country. We can’t hold your hand here, you will need to become an avid student of international visas. Every country’s immigration department has a website listing what’s on offer, and it’s up to you to spend your time trawling through them.
Better the owl chasing you now than the fascist state doing so in the future.
Having started looking, what skills can you learn? Can you come up with a location-independent way to earn a living? How many languages can you speak? Anglophones tend to be bad at learning other languages, so it’s an easy way to give yourself an edge. Sometimes visas even hinge on speaking the language, as an example Japan has one for agricultural workers which requires a high standard of Japanese. We know from our own experience here at Trans Rescue that language learning is hellishly difficult, but with apps such as Duolingo being only a download away at least it’s never been easier to start.
Here’s the bottom line then. Only the most blinkered of individuals could claim that there’s no threat of America lurching over the brink into fascism, or that trans people wouldn’t be first against the wall in that eventuality. There’s no credible future in somehow seeing off the military industrial complex of a fascist government with an AR-15 popgun, so your best chance of avoiding the inevitable is to get out. Time is running out for that to happen, so the earlier you take action the better your chances of survival. We can offer basic advice and we’ve done our best to share as much as we can here, but we can’t hold your hand through the whole process.
That’s up to you.
Header image: Alt-right members preparing to enter Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, ‘Unite the Right’ rally, 12 August 2017. Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0.
We’re Trans Rescue, and what we do is help trans people get out of dangerous places around the world. If you’re reading this site, you’ll know that the number of places we’re concerned about is rising, and we don’t think it’s hyperbolae to say that countries such as the USA and the UK are heading towards some very dark places in which trans people will very soon be in mortal danger. These are our countries of birth, it gives us no pleasure to watch this happening in what should be safe and free places.
Fighting Endless Small Battles Is Wearing Us Down
Every week it seems as though there is a new revelation, an American state criminalises trans healthcare or a US politician calls for our elimination, while a British newspaper stokes a new hate campaign with a bogus scare story. Being a trans activist has become an exhausting process of constantly fighting small battles, and while we may win some the effect of all this fighting is taking its toll.
Watching this happen has become a concern of ours, as we see each one of these battles as a small step down the steep slope towards fascism and we think, genocide. The trans community is wearing itself out fighting a losing battle, and has we think, become too exhausted to see the bigger picture until it becomes too late. It’s chillingly simple: nothing will satisfy them but our complete elimination, and our greatest worry is that they will gain the power they need to do that. Fighting all those small battles isn’t going to stop them, neither is hoarding guns and staying to shoot it out, because when they come for us they will do so with the full force of a militarised state apparatus.
How Bad Does It Have To Get To Convince You?
If humanity has learned one thing from the horrors of 1930s Germany, it is that those who get out early will be the survivors of genocide, not those who leave it too late or who stick around to fight a futile rearguard action. We’ve already outlined the information needed for all budgets to start planing an exit from the USA and the UK, but how bluntly must we state the need to get out of those countries before people accept it as a priority?
We don’t want you to be a name or worse still just a number we repeat at future Trans Day of Remembrance ceremonies. Please don’t become one more person we’re trying to save, instead choose to be a survivor able to testify and hold the criminals to account.
We have a story to tell you, and it’s much too big for us to handle alone, so we think you need to know about it. It’s a story about Uganda and east Africa, but it also has troubling implications for the USA and other developed-world countries.
Government-Sanctioned Anti-LGBT Violence Is Back in East Africa
The tl:dr; or perhaps too scary:didn’t read, is that Uganda has tried on previous occasions to pass a draconian law with the death penalty for homosexuality. Last time, the Ugandan courts struck it down, but now it’s being reintroduced. As a result, there is an escalating pogrom-like wave of violence against LGBT, and especially trans, people. We fear this may be the opening of a wider LGBT genocide in Uganda, and later across all of East Africa.
The less visible back story is that this is being encouraged and supported, if not initiated by, the US Christian right, and may be an attempt to move the Overton window to where killing LGBT people is acceptable. The American right wing is well aware that progressive activists in the USA ignore what happens in Africa. Thus they know once a genocide in Africa happens and there is no universal response, it can be exported to more and more places, until finally it comes to America. Thus we should support the Ugandans, because this is a spark that needs to be extinguished before it becomes a fire. And we need to treat it as a warning that genocide is coming to the US.
The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index describes Uganda as a “hybrid regime”1, where widespread election fraud and intimidation of opponents seriously undermine democracy. Uganda has had a single prime minister since 1986, Yoweri Museveni. Religion plays a huge part in Ugandan politics. It’s a largely Christian country (84%), split roughly evenly between Catholics and an evangelical offshoot of the Anglican church. At independence in 1962 the country inherited British colonial laws that made homosexuality illegal. Section 145, 146, and 148 give terms of 5 to 7 years for homosexual acts.
The connection with US politics can be found in an unexpected place, a long running political institution in the US is the annual “National Prayer Breakfast”, organized by the Fellowship Foundation, also known as “The Family”. The event has grown to a week-long series of meetings, meals, and activities. In theory it’s hosted by members of the US Congress, and most Washington DC politicians attend.
In 2008 Jeff Sharlet wrote an expose of the Fellowship Foundation as a public name for “The Family”, a Christian new religious movement deeply committed to the idea of influencing public figures towards Christian right ideals. After Netflix released a documentary series about the Family, questions started being raised about the relationship between the National Prayer Breakfast and the organization. As a result, in 2024 the US Congress will organize the event rather than the Family.
The National Prayer Breakfast has spawned copies in many places, including Uganda, also organized by the Fellowship Foundation. At the Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008 Uganda MP David Bahati, an ‘associate’ of the Family, floated the idea of a bill enacting the death penalty for those convicted of homosexuality under certain circumstances, and providing long prison sentences for all homosexual acts and for advocating for LGBT rights as an individual or NGO. (If you want to be terrified, watch this 2010 interview with Bahati and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC).
When Bahati then showed this bill to others within the Family they considered it a ‘bridge too far’2, and the death penalty provision was dropped. The bill worked its way through the Ugandan legislative process, attracting considerable attention from foreign governments with funding of LGBT NGOs within Uganda, diplomatic action to threaten sanctions, and economic pressure. Nonetheless it was signed into law on February 24, 2014, but on August 1, of that year the supreme court of Uganda declared it to be invalid on procedural grounds.
In 2015 Ugandan MP Monicah Amoding introduced what became known as the “2019 Sexual Offences Bill”, largely a repeat of the 2014 bill. In 2021 the bill was passed by parliament, but vetoed by Museveni, largely due to concerns about loss of foreign aid.
On February 28 of this year MP Asuman Basalirwa introduced a new bill, the “Anti-Homosexuality bill 2023”. This seems to be part of a much better orchestrated attack. There are currently almost daily calls in the press for anti-homosexuality laws. Even Uganda’s muslim clergy has been enlisted – a rare event in a deeply religiously divided society. On Christmas day the Inter Religious Council (IRCU) Christmas Message, an important event broadcast on the state broadcaster UBC, called for religious leaders to come together to fight homosexuality. On January 26 Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba of the Church of Uganda, also head of the IRCU, called for an attack on LGBT people.
On January 25 Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayabwa, with the support of first lady and minister of education Janet Musevini, introduced a “Get The Gays Out” bill requiring that all male secondary school students obtain an anal examination before the start of term, with those on whom anal papillomas are found to be expelled. This bill was encouraged by a coalition of religious leaders, in turn supported by The Family.
In late January a video started circulating, of a Ugandan trans woman being murdered by two men with knives. They stabbed her over 40 times on camera. We have a copy of this video, but are not releasing it out of basic human decency.
In adjacent Kenya, on February 24, the supreme court declared that the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has the right of association, and declined to dissolve the organization. There have been street demonstrations and calls for anti-homosexuality bills in Kenya in response, and stories of street violence. Our trans haven Eden House has been under a semi-lockdown.
On March 1, the president of nearby Burundi called for Burundians to “fight homosexuality” at the Burundi National Prayer Breakfast.
The Daily Monitor is the Ugandan paper of record, this is its front page on the day this article is being published.
Two days later on March 3 in Uganda, the new 2023 Anti-homosexuality bill was gazetted. The bill mandates hefty penalties including:
100,000,000 SHS fine (about 2000 USD) for “promoting homosexuality”
10 year prison sentence for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ (if HIV+ or with a minor)
5 year prison sentence for ‘simple homosexuality’
10 year prison sentence for conducting a same-sex marriage
Compensation to the victims
Journalists who disclose the identity of a ‘victim of homosexuality’ fined 5,000,000 SHS (about 100 USD)
7 year prison sentence for running a homosexual brothel
1 year prison sentence for renting to a homosexual
Courts can order protection for a child “likely to engage in homosexuality”
We entered the picture in mid December, helping 5 trans women who were attacked in Bundibugyo. Three of the women were able to flee when their home was attacked by police and locals, but two were arrested. Both were savagely beaten, one’s genitals mutilated, the other beaten on the head so severely she died. Two other women were jailed for several days and severely abused. One woman’s injuries are permanent.
While state violence against LGBT people, especially trans people, is endemic, the community on the ground has reported a sharp increase in the level and frequency of violence. This violence has only been accelerating since December, and many LGBT Ugandans are trying to flee the country, mostly into neighboring Kenya. We have had far more requests for help than we can respond to.
Jeff Sharlet, who has written frequently about The Family, observed in an interview during the Netflix series that The Family likes to work in places “no one is paying attention to”. His example is fighting gay rights in Romania and Uganda. Then, he says, they expand to other places more on international radar. This is an old Christian evangelical strategy, to try to convert people “no one cares about”. They will send missionaries to isolated places around the world, use money, and often colonial power, to inject Christian beliefs and values into such places.
We know Uganda has become and is becoming a much more dangerous place for LGBT people. We, and many in Uganda, are very concerned it may be the opening actions of an LGBT genocide. Many there are looking for avenues of escape. In a larger scope, we worry that these actions may be an attempt to shift the Overton window. And we are concerned that they may hail an attempt at genocide in a western country, probably the United States.
What can we do about it?
Copyright 2023 Peter Tatchell
First, we can support LGBT Ugandans. They immediately need money and visibility, without repeating the mistakes made when a number of Ugandan NGOs were funded with little oversight after the 2014 bill was introduced. In short: throwing money without oversight at any random Ugandan who claims to have an LGBT organization is counter-productive.
Second, we can give their plight visibility, something that can be readily achieved by the LGBT community and allies in the US or in Europe. Outside every Ugandan embassy, every time the Ugandan government seeks to promote the country, at every Ugandan state visit, and at any entity or event supporting the Ugandan government or economy, there should be demonstrations and publicity about the plight of LGBT people in the country. Only by embarrassing the Ugandan government in public and by associating any aid or other material support for the Ugandan economy with extremely bad publicity, can we ensure the safety of that country’s minorities. These are some of the external tactics that helped with the struggle against South African apartheid.
Third, we can keep a careful watch on the situation, and understand what it portends for the USA and other developed countries. LGBT people and their allies worldwide need to be aware of developed world power structures, especially those of the far right and of Christian fundamentalism, to understand their methods as used in countries like Uganda, and to foresee how those might be imported into countries closer to home.
We will leave you by quoting a recent tweet from Frank Mugisha, Ugandan LGBT Rights worker, “Ugandans have really been radicalized to hate LGBTQ persons. What went wrong?”
Long-time followers of our social media presence will know that we’ve been supporting a pair of Egyptian trans women over the last year. Rudy and Nancy are pseudonyms for a pair who have been on the run from both their families, and the police crackdown on LGBT people. Last October we published some of their audio testimony.
Good News, And Bad News
We have some good news about them, but also some bad news. Last week we had arranged for them to fly out of Egypt to a third country, and while Rudy has made it, Nancy was turned back at the airport. This is one of the risks in our work, that somewhere a random member of staff at an airport won’t like the look of them, and won’t let them on the plane.
Right now we have Rudy safely in the third country, and Nancy still in Egypt. We have flight tickets for both of them in about ten days to reach their final destination, but if we can’t get Nancy to the third country she won’t be on that flight.
Now Nancy Needs Your Help
So this is where you come in. We’re mounting an appeal to get Nancy out of Egypt to the third country, for which we estimate we’ll need about 1200 Euros. If we don’t manage it we lose our existing investment in her flight to safety, she’s stuck in Egypt, and we’ll have to raise even more money for a fresh extraction in future.
So please help us if you can. It’s a fairly short time to raise quite a lot of money, but I know our supporters as a generous bunch who are concerned with getting endangered trans people to safety. Please help us ensure that two people rather than one reach safety in early March.
Header image: Jonathan Payne from Ayr, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0.
There are many contenders for the most famous newspaper headline of all time, and many of them are triumphs of the journalist’s art, skilfully capturing world events for posterity. A few among them are as much infamous as they are famous, headlines a newspaper might wish to suppress had they not been for all to see on every newsstand in the country. Perhaps the most obvious one in this category for Brits comes unsurprisingly from the Daily Mail, whose owner the 1st Viscount Rothermere exclaimed in print in January 1934: “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”. His open support for Hitler and for Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists was toned down as events unfolded, but the headline remains to remind the world that the Mail was and is tainted by support of far-right causes.
A Community Mourns
Our community is in shock, mourning, and anger.
As this is being written, the trans community in the UK stands in mourning for one of our own who was brutally taken from us. Brianna Ghey was a 16-year-old who was stabbed to death in a Cheshire park by two other teenagers in a transphobic attack. Her tragic fate comes against the backdrop of a long-running campaign of institutionalised anti-trans hate speech, and is the inevitable result which many of us have feared for years would come. The knife was wielded by her attackers, but for the trans community there is no doubt. In a Britain without a media and political establishment with us firmly in its sights, Brianna Ghey’s life would have been much safer and she would still be with us.
The Guardian likes to think of itself as a newspaper for nice people.The Sun, true to form.
There’s a phrase you sometimes hear in British public life, “The Great and the Good”, meaning a Who’s-Who of the upper echelons of power and influence. Of course many people would argue that it’s a misnomer as few of them are truly either great or good, but it’s fair to say that among them you’d find senior politicians, journalists, and other prominent figures. It includes newspaper editors such as Katharine Viner of the Guardian, or Ted Verity at the Mail, just two of the many papers that have gone out of their way to platform vile hate speech against the trans community. Or how about consistently transphobic Members of Parliament such as Women and Equalities Committee members and alumni Rosie Duffield, Jackie Doyle-Price, and Mark Jenkinson? Staying in Parliament even the Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch, holder of a post which is supposed to provide representation for the trans community, is known to have well-documented transphobic views.
The very definition of institutionalised transphobia: you don’t have to look very far before the BBC’s mask slips.
The above paragraph contains merely a snapshot of the institutional capture by transphobes of the British Establishment. There’s hardly a political viewpoint or media outlet not tainted by it or that has not tolerated hate speech within its ranks, there is no player who is blameless when it comes to the targeting of trans people. While Rothermere’s support for fascism in the 1930s put him out on a limb, here in the 2020s there are players on all sides who have unquestioningly given a platform for hate speech against our community. As far as trans people are concerned they all have Brianna Ghey’s blood on their hands, and our worry is that before the transphobia is rooted out for good there will be many more like her.
What Did YOU Do When They Came After Trans People?
Never forget what happened last time they came for trans people, and nobody did anything.
All those people mentioned as the Great and the Good, as well as all those too numerous to list whose views align with theirs, undoubtedly have a high opinion of themselves. They no doubt see themselves as successful people at the peak of their careers, and they imagine that they are laying down for themselves a legacy. Perhaps there will be a portrait of the great editor on the wall in the newspaper boardroom, or for the MPs even a Prime Ministerial portrait gracing the staircase at Number Ten. But how is it really going to go for them, in a few decades time after the current explosion of hate has been played to its bloody conclusion and when the sinister ideology behind the transphobia has been exposed for what it is? It’s unlikely that many people will discuss the 1st Viscount Rothermere in the 2020s without his writing in support of fascists being front and centre, and similarly it’s likely that for these people their active participation in an environment which led to the deaths of trans people will be the first topic in their legacy. It’s pretty obvious that some of them want the elimination of trans people, but do they really think they’ll get away with a spotless legacy? Perhaps some of them need to consider that.
In the 1930s the German trans people who were murdered after the raids and famous book burnings at Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft had nobody to speak for and remember them. Ninety years later that is no longer the case, and whatever happens as the far right pursue their campaigns against trans people in the UK or the USA, there is a worldwide community who will ensure that those who enabled them can not fade away and pretend they weren’t really part of it. Trans people won’t go away, they will keep the receipts, and you can depend on it, they will ensure eventual justice for any victims. A few of the would-be Rothermeres should think on that.
Our passengers usually travel alone, faceless beings in the global air transit system. That anonymity is their shield, because they warrant only brief inspection among the crowds hurrying for their flights. As a blind passenger Layla wasn’t so lucky, as at each step her accessibility needs had to be met. Her itinerary touched the UK, and so I met her at Stansted, tired but happy to be safe. We had a few days with a volunteer, so we took a trip to London walking round some of the sights.
She would leave from Gatwick, but here fate intervened. Sometimes the system favours us, but this time the airline didn’t like her visa and wouldn’t let her fly. That’s the reality of traveling on non-Western passports, something EU, UK, or US passport holders never see.
We were stranded in the early hours of the morning with an urgent need to think on our feet, reschedule flights, and find somewhere affordable and safe for a fortnight’s unscheduled stopover. We found a holiday cottage in a remote part of Great Britain’s west coast, extremely cheap at the start of November. The weather was wild but the cottage was comfortable, and it was nice to get to know her. She has a natural talent for languages that leaves my slow learning in the dust.
Her final flight left Manchester, again in the dark. Another motel at a motorway services gave us a few hours sleep, then she breezed through check-in with no worries at the colour of her passport. I was soon wishing her a safe journey before driving home into the night. Over my coffee at a stop in the Midlands the message came, that she was safe. She’s going to live a successful life as a confident young woman in a supportive environment.
Today a young Saudi trans woman is safe in the asylum system of a European country. Layla Al Darwish was born with the misfortune not only of being trans in the most repressive country on Earth, but with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that has made her functionally blind.
After her parents discovered she’d contacted us, her father threatened to kill her. In Saudi, this is not an idle threat. The Saudi state will do nothing against a parent who harms their child. So we had to arrange her escape quickly.
This has been a very dangerous extraction, the most difficult and complex operation we’ve completed to date, spanning from June to December 2022. A half dozen very brave people helped Layla on her way. One of them nearly had loved ones killed doing so, and Layla was pursued by family members while on the road.
Her travels took her through the Republic of Georgia. We are deeply grateful for the assistance of Equality Georgia, who partnered with us in this operation.
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, Dec 14, 2022, the house where five trans women lived together in Bundibugyo Uganda was raided by police. Three of the women managed to flee, but two others were beaten by police and local people, screaming “Are you men or women?”
The two women were arrested and taken to the local police station where they were sexually assaulted and further beaten.
We are assisting a local organization help all five escape to the local organization’s trans shelter in a safer place.
The local organization has arranged to free the two jailed women and provided medical care. We are extracting all five to a safer place.
Work like this requires funds. If you can, please give a small gift to help this keep happening.
One of our passengers has had experience with registries of trans people. In light of the recent decision in Florida registering trans minors, she thought it was important people know her story in her own words:
I’m over 30 in Hungary. Before they banned transition, I had my psychological evaluation in the way, and visited psychologists over my issues. After the ban in 2020, the psychologists told me they can not help me any more, and after a few months, some ministry’s office started to harass me on the phone, pretty much threatening me that if I attempt to transition, they will send me to jail or worse.
I reported such to the police and blocked the number.
Nearing 2021, police officers shown up at my workplace and asked me to come around to the nearby police office. The officers were apologetic and embarrassed, but “we just do what we are told to do”. In the office, some woman from a ministry (not from the police) started shouting at me about how being trans is an evil fad and corrupts children, and I should write an official paper that I am normal, not trans, never will be trans and fill in some data on it. I refused because it seemed like getting data and “I am cisgender, leave me alone”.
Then she shown the papers from my doctor, which they pretty much confiscated from the hospital. “Yes, I had a time when I was unsure, but I am sure now. Leave me alone.”
So as I left, a police officer called me aside and apologized in the name of the Hungarian police force, stating that this is from the ministry and they have to do this, smaller office, so they are doing what they are told to do. I left anyways.
The phone harassment did not stopped and near the end of 2021, officers came around again, but they just shrugged when I told them they got the wrong guy.
Early 2022, Trans Rescue helped me out of Hungary to a safe zone in the EU. They gave me a temporary house until I got on my feet and legally could stay in a country.
The harassing calls did not stopped, the Hungarian officials still tried to threaten me that if I ever return to Hungary with a changed gender, they will hit me “with all the power of the law”.
She, and we, thought it was important to get this out, but for obvious reasons she was reluctant to release it on her own.
Over the past year then, we’ve urged people to not wait for that end, but to
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