World Cup 2022: 'I am very afraid', says Qatari transgender woman
Controversy about Qatar hosting football's World Cup has mostly focused on LGBT rights in the country and around same-sex relationships being criminalised. Transgender Qataris can be detained for "violating public morality", which requires no trial or official charge. BBC News has spoken to two trans Qataris about their lives.
"I am very afraid, but I just want people to know that we do exist," Shahd says about her decision to speak out about life as a transgender woman. Like the other person in this article, we have changed Shahd's name to protect her.
We have been messaging her over an encrypted app for her safety, and she travels away from her home to video call us in secret from a darkened room.
Shahd shows us her hair which she was forced to cut into a masculine style, but does not reveal by whom.
She then unbuttons her shirt to show us wounds on top of her chest.
Shahd says the wounds are the consequence of being arrested for "impersonating a woman". Authorities told her to remove breast tissue that had formed since she started taking oestrogen, which she got without prescription from another country.
"I lost my job and my friends," she says.
"I was arrested and interrogated several times because of my identity. I lost everything."
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63783327
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