If you’re outraged about the recent call for transgender Malaysians to be arrested by the Minister of Religious Affairs, you need to understand that this is not an isolated incident but instead the result of decades of anti-LGBT laws and state-sponsored conversion programmes.

What does it say about a government who targets an already vulnerable community who would have been disproportionately affected during a global pandemic?

This is the time for us to be critically examining the environment that the state uses to push more laws and policies that impede on our human rights during a crisis.

And it breaks my heart that this problematic narrative has been internalised by so many of us in the community who feel that it is safer to just abide by their rules in order to survive.

We must stand in solidarity with our trans community as these laws, policies, & narratives affect our access to basic rights to employment, healthcare, education, legal gender recognition, & access to fair justice, regardless of whether you are Muslim or non-Muslim, trans or cis.

Join @QueerLapis and I in writing to our MPs to demand Dr Zulkifli withdraw his statement AND demand that the government ban all forms of state-sponsored conversion therapy.

If the link to the sample email is broken, you can access it here instead folks. BM version coming soon!!! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qahsgztlk75J4YGpCm5NANQsb77kZp88S1QDApiwVvE/edit?usp=sharing