Kurdistan Region’s transgender sex workers: From hell at home to damnation on the streets
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As night falls, Bewar*, a transgender sex worker, puts on her makeup and hairpiece and starts roaming the streets of Sarchinar in Sulaimani, trying to escape the eyes of the police while she offers sexual favors to potentially dangerous strangers in their cars in exchange for chump change, seeking to survive another day in a world that has rejected her from day one.
Publicly identifying as any sexual orientation or gender identity other than straight and cisgender in a Kurdish society puts one at risk of either being killed in the name of honor or disowned, exiled, and condemned to a life of endless persecution on the streets.
Growing up in a small conservative town in the Kurdistan Region, Bewar was immediately rejected by her family and outcast by her schoolmates for exhibiting stereotypically feminine characteristics from an early age and subjected to a great deal of abuse and physical violence for “ruining the family’s reputation.”
“They expected me to act like a normal boy, but I could not because I knew I was a girl at heart,” Bewar told Rudaw English, while continuously and frantically looking over her shoulders in fear of being arrested by the police.
Bewar left her town for Sulaimani around three years ago, hoping to escape the nightmare she had endured at home for the first 19 years of her life, not knowing the road ahead would prove just as hazardous and emotionally scarring.
“At first I wanted to find a job, but no one would hire me because of how I looked. Eventually, I had no other choice but to resort to what people call ‘prostitution’ but in reality is merely a means to stay alive.”
The persecution and targeting of transgender people does not stop on the streets, Bewar stresses, decrying the double standards transgender streetwalkers are subjected to by the authorities in comparison to cisgender female sex workers.
“The police and the media always accuse transgender people of being prostitutes… while cisgender female sex workers in licensed hotels receive hundreds of dollars per client, transgender sex workers, struggling for a bite to eat, have no choice but to offer their bodies to an old man or a drunk for five or 10 thousand dinars [3 or 6 dollars]. Sometimes they [clients] do not even pay that and beat them [transgender sex workers] up.”
As Bewar continues telling her story, she is joined by two other transgender streetwalkers, one from Baghdad and another from Iran’s western Kurdish region (Rojhelat), who share the same plight.
Baran*, originally from Rojhelat’s Sanandaj (Sine), cut off connections with her family around four years ago and headed towards Tehran, before moving to Sulaimani last year. She describes the Middle East as a “living hell” for transgender people.
“I have lived in many cities in Iran and have visited the Kurdistan Region. Transgender people face the threat of ridicule, assault, and abuse everywhere,” said Baran.
Fighting back the tears, Baran told Rudaw English that when she first started living in Sulaimani she was sexually and physically assaulted by a young man she had trusted, and his friend.
“They raped me, beat me up, and took my phone. I did not dare file a complaint because I had heard that Sulaimani police arrest transgender people.”
The streets of Sulaimani’s Sarchinar neighborhood, where people of any sexual orientation can pick up sex workers, have for years been the subject of controversy and condemnation by the Kurdistan Region’s conservative community.
In April 2021, security forces in Sulaimani arrested a group of suspected LGBTQI+ individuals in Sarchinar, under the pretext of cracking down on prostitution in the city. The arrests caused uproar from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region’s queer community and members of the civil society.
The community of transgender sex workers in Erbil’s Ainkawa are even more intimidated at the prospect of speaking to journalists about their situation, and decry the same feeling of constant fear and discrimination as the streetwalkers in Sarchinar.
“A few years ago, we were doing fine and had a lot of clients. Now, in addition to [having to cope with] the bad economy, we are also arrested by the police. I was once arrested and taken to the police station where they mocked me and called me a prostitute,” Nila, a 32-year-old streetwalker in Ainkawa, told Rudaw English.
“[Cisgender] women are publicly working as sex workers in the nightclubs and hotels of Ainkawa and no one bats an eye, but we get arrested for taking a walk,” she lamented.
Frustrated with the never-ending persecution and abuse both at home and on the streets, Nila says that her goal is to save up enough money to leave Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
As this piece was being reported, Rudaw English’s staff was questioned by police officers on the streets about their reason for being there. The police officers said they were unable to answer questions about the arrest of transgender sex workers.
In its 2022 report on human rights practices in Iraq, the United States State Department highlighted that the country’s LGBTQI+ community continues to face intimidation, violence, and discrimination. The report criticized the Iraqi government for failing to identify and hold accountable attackers of LGBTQI+ members, or protect the targeted community.
In a March 2022 report, Human Rights Watch reported hundreds of cases of “killings, abductions, torture, and sexual violence” targeting LGBTQI+ members by armed groups in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region between 2018 and 2021, based on interviews with 54 queer Iraqis.
In February 2022, Doski Azad, a 23-year-old transgender woman in Duhok, was found dead after being shot twice allegedly by her brother in an “honor” killing.
“Iraq and the Kurdistan Region will become hell for the transgender community in the near future. On one hand they are identified as homosexuals by uneducated journalists, and on the other they face the threat of dangerous laws, pushed by major religious figures, being passed against them,” Pshko*, a Kurdish transgender rights activist living abroad, told Rudaw English.
Anti-LGBTQI+ campaigns have repeatedly been launched by key religious figures in Iraq, most notably influential Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who has frequently targeted the community in his statements. In December, Sadr called for combating the LGBTQI+ “not with violence, nor with murder and threats, but with education, awareness, logic and high moral standards” to prevent the spread of “vice”.
A Sulaimani court in June ruled to revoke the licensure of Rasan Organization, a non-profit advocating for LGBTQI+ rights in the Kurdistan Region, claiming that the organization had violated the terms of its license as it was initially registered as a women’s rights organization.
*The names are aliases chosen by the subjects themselves or the author to protect their identities
Translated and written by Chenar Chalak