ロヒンギャ難民でトランスジェンダーの美容師、二重の偏見と闘う

【クトゥパロンＡＦＰ＝時事】ターニャさん（２２）は少数派中の少数派だ。ミャンマーのイスラム教徒少数民族ロヒンギャで、トランスジェンダーの美容師でもある。世界最大の難民キャンプに暮らす人々の中でも特に多くの差別に直面してきた。（写真はバングラデシュ・クトゥパロン難民キャンプに近い美容サロンで働くターニャさん）
　５年前、ミャンマー軍によるロヒンギャ弾圧を受けてバングラデシュに逃れた約７５万人の難民の中に、ターニャさん一家もいた。
　ターニャさんは避難先のコックスバザールで指折りの美容師の一人に数えられるようになり、他の多くのロヒンギャよりも高い収入を得られるようになった。
　しかし、保守的なイスラム教徒であるロヒンギャの仲間から嫌がらせを受け、家族からは責められ、今も闘っている。
　「幼い頃から女の子のようにドレスアップしてメークするのが好きでした。家族はそれを嫌がり、兄たちにはよく殴られました。私のことを恥だと思ったのでしょう」
　１０代前半にトランスジェンダーであることを周囲に伝えてからは、暴力や虐待にさらされてきたと言う。「悪魔の呪いだとか、アラーの罰だとか言われていました」
　バングラデシュに避難したロヒンギャ難民のうち、トランスジェンダーであることを公言しているのは約３００人で、日常的に他のロヒンギャ難民からの差別や嘲笑、身体的攻撃の対象となっている。
　支援者の一人は、「ロヒンギャのトランスジェンダーの人々が無残に殴られ、道端で血まみれになっていることも少なくない」と話す。

■「男か女か誰も気にしない時」
　ターニャさんは、コックスバザール郊外のクトゥパロン難民キャンプで美容サービスを始めた。ある実業家がその才能に気付き、ターニャさんが働けるようキャンプ外のマーケットにサロンを開設してくれたのだ。
　その稼ぎのおかげで、キャンプで同居する家族もある程度は一目置くようになった。とはいえ、ターニャさんがトランスジェンダーであることを受け入れてはいない。
　姉のグル・バハルさんは、今もターニャさんのことを元の男性名で呼び、「元に戻ってまた兄たちのようになってほしい」とＡＦＰに語った。「彼（ターニャさん）が道を歩くと、みんなが笑います。時々、家の前まで追いかけてきてばかにするのです」
　ターニャさんは嘲笑や罵倒をばねに決意を固め、ロヒンギャのトランスジェンダーコミュニティーのリーダー役を買って出るようになった。コミュニティーの数人を対象にサロンで美容ビジネスについて教えてもいる。
　その一人で、研修生としてサロンで働くファルハナさんは「ただ道を歩いているだけで、私たちは男娼と呼ばれます」とＡＦＰに語った。
　「もし私たちが反応すれば、集団で殴りかかってきます。ターニャは、そうした嘲笑を無視するすべを教えてくれました」
　ターニャさんはいずれ自分でサロンを立ち上げ、他のトランスジェンダーの人々を雇って一緒に働き、難民キャンプで爪はじきや侮辱を受ける生活から解放される場を提供したいと考えている。
　「私の体が男か女かなんて、誰も気にしない時が来るのを夢見ています」【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/06/27-14:54）

A minority in a minority, transgender Rohingya beautician Tanya has faced discrimination on even more fronts than most other residents of the world's biggest refugee camp.
Five years ago, Myanmar's military launched a brutal crackdown on the Rohingya, forcing an estimated 750,000 of them -- including Tanya and her family -- to flee and take shelter in squalid settlements across the Bangladesh border.
Since then, Tanya's skills with mascara and foundation have earned her a reputation as one of the best make-up artists in Cox's Bazar -- and better earnings than most other Rohingya.
But she still has to contend with harassment from fellow members of the often socially conservative Muslim ethnic group, as well as recriminations from her own family.
My soul says I'm a woman, the 22-year-old told AFP. I don't understand why other people have a problem with that.
I liked to dress up and do make-up like girls from a very young age. My family didn't like it. My brothers used to hit me. They were ashamed of me.
She came out as trans in her early teens and said she had been subjected to violence and abuse ever since.
I was called a curse of the devils and a punishment from Allah, she said.
Since her arrival, she has found work at a salon, where dyeing the hair and painting the lashes of excited brides is a welcome respite from life in the camp, a sprawling patchwork of overcrowded shanty homes fashioned from tarpaulin and bamboo.
Tanya is the best beautician in the entire district, according to her client Salma Akter.
She is a hijra, but she is very good, Akter told AFP, using a common South Asian term for a third gender.
People come here from all over the region to get their face done by her.
Tanya is now one of a lucky few bringing a steady income into her community.
But the around 300 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who openly identify as transgender are routinely subjected to discrimination, taunts and physical attacks from other members of their community.
There are many instances of Rohingya transgender being brutally beaten and left on the roads in pool of blood, said Dil Afrose Chaity, who works with transgender Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
During the pandemic, one of them was beaten for sporting bigger hair. They were accused of carrying coronavirus to the camp with their hair, Chaity said.
- New horizons -
Myanmar's Rohingya had already laboured under decades of discrimination when the military attacked in 2017.
An international tribunal in The Hague is investigating the violence, which has been designated by the United States as an act of genocide.
Despite the trauma of the crackdown, arriving in Bangladesh opened new horizons for Tanya, who found a much larger transgender community that welcomed her with open arms and gave her the female name she now uses.
She began offering beauty services from her shelter in Kutupalong before her talents were discovered by a Bangladeshi businessman, who set up a salon for her at a market outside the camp.
Her earnings have helped her win some respect from her family, with whom she shares a home.
But they have not accepted her identity.
Elder sister Gul Bahar, who still refers to Tanya by her birth name and gender, says she hopes her sibling would start being like my older brothers again.
Whenever he is out on the road, people laugh at him. Sometimes they follow him to our door and mock him, she told AFP.
- 'Man or woman' -
The taunts and abuse have hardened Tanya's resolve and cast her in the role of mentor to other members of her community, some of whom she has invited into the salon to learn the beauty trade.
People call us boy whores even when we'd simply walk on the road minding our own business, Farhana, a fellow transgender refugee, told AFP while working in the salon as a trainee.
If we react, they'd group up and start beating us. Tanya shows us how to ignore these taunts.
Tanya plans to eventually set up her own salon and hire other transgender women to work alongside her, offering them the same respite from the rejection and insults of other refugees.
There are more hijra in the camps than you see. Most are afraid to come out, she said.
I dream of a time when it will never occur to anyone here whether I have a body of a man or woman.