what happened last week

In Hong Kong, two trans men won their legal right to be recognized as female without undergoing full surgery

Trans activists in Hong Kong celebrated a legal victory last week. Henry Tse and 'Q', two trans men, fought for the right to be recognized as a man without full surgery – and won. (South China Morning Post, Paywall)

Why this matters: Transmen are the minority within the minority of LGBTQ+ people in Hong Kong. Due to various reasons, little attention has been given to trans men and the issues they face. They are marginalized to the extent that we are close to being invisible.

Tell me more
This legal victory has been more than four years in the making. Tse has long been fighting to change the gender marker on his ID card from female, his assigned sex at birth, to male. In 2017, his initial application to do so was rejected, with the Commissioner of Registration citing, 'well, you haven't had your sex reassignment surgery yet. The law says you need one.' Tse, along with two other trans men who had the same issue, lodged a judicial review arguing that 'the fact that we have to have surgery to be recognized as female is unconstitutional. This law clearly violates our right to privacy.' Many of their petitions failed... until last Monday. A five-judge panel ruled that the government policy did, in fact, infringe on their constitutional right to privacy. (Hong Kong Free Press)

• Zoom out: In China, the trans population is small, according to research carried out in 2020 by Zhang Yudi, a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Science and Technology Beijing. Yudi found 30 transgender people in a sample of 10,590 from 26 colleges in 10 provinces. This works out at 0.28%, suggesting a transgender population of a little more than four million. Life for trans people in China can be hard, as broader society and local courts are still hostile to trans aspirations. However, you get some privileges if you are better-off financially. (Nikkei Asia) One of China's biggest stars is also transgender, Jin Xing. (The New York Times)

Who is Henry Tse? 
He's 31 years old and one of the founders of the NGO Transgender Equality Hong Kong. He first experienced gender dysphoria (meaning, his gender identity didn't align with the gender he was assigned at birth) when he was still a young child. His family was  “very conservative” and considered gender non-conforming behavior in general to be problematic. Things didn't get any better when he attended a religious all-girls secondary school. “From the very first day, we were told that we need to ‘be a lady’ and be elegant,” Tse told Hong Kong Free Press. Having always sported short hair, he said he was picked on by some teachers, who assumed he was a tomboy and thus a bad student. After completing the public exam in Form Five (read up on the education system in Hong Kong here), Tse left for the United Kingdom. Later, as he was preparing to enter university, he realized he didn’t want to be seen as a woman anymore. And in 2012, he started hormone treatment and underwent top surgery to remove his breasts the following year.

But why did he not go 'all the way'? 
Tse said he experienced gender dysphoria mostly because he felt like he didn't look like a man. After the mastectomy, he did not feel the need for a more invasive procedure to remove his uterus and ovaries. He also successfully changed the gender marker on his British passport to male, and had no problem living and working as a male during his time in the UK. But things changed when Tse returned to Hong Kong, where he was still labelled as female on his ID card. 

How important is the ID card in Hong Kong? 
Very important. “In Hong Kong, we are required by law to carry our ID card with us every day. The police can request to check your ID anytime. You basically need your ID card for everything. So when it plays such an important role in your daily life, the mismatch [of the gender marker] becomes a huge problem,” Tse said in an interview with the Hong Kong Free Press. Tse said that he feels panic whenever he has to show his card, because he doesn't know how police will react. “I also feel like my privacy has been intruded on… because it exposed my history of being transgender,” he said. Every time he presents his ID card, he is forced to “come out” again.

OK. Wow. This is delayed justice, then. 
Exactly. That's also what Tse called the judges' decision as he thanked his lawyers and all those who have supported him along his journey, “especially the lads and the volunteers who have helped in the Transmen in Hong Kong project. Without them, [this] historic moment… would not have happened.” Henry also produced this multimedia advocacy project to put trans men in the forefront of this greater debate in society: 

Two strong earthquakes hit Syria, Kurdistan and Turkey – more than 33,000 people have died so far

• This part of Syria and Kurdistan has endured crisis after crisis, home to millions of people who have gotten through 12 years of civil war and displacement, hunger and disease. Even before the earthquake, 4.1 million here required humanitarian assistance. In the past and now, President Bashar al-Assad has made it difficult for humanitarian groups to access these areas. (The Washington Post) The Kurdish NGO Heyva Sor said that the Syrian government at some point was preventing aid deliveries.

• As a result, according to The White Helmets (a group of 3,000 volunteer rescuers working in the region), there isn't much aid getting through to the people here. The situation here is so bad that the United Nations’ top humanitarian relief official, Martin Griffiths, admitted that the UN had failed to provide help to people in Syria’s opposition-controlled region since Monday’s devastating earthquake.
   
• About 1,100 bodies have so far been brought back from Turkey to Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fled to the southern Turkish region hardest hit by the earthquake amid Syria’s ongoing civil war.

• The official death toll in this region is a far cry from that of Turkey and Bakûr. However, this number is likely going to change as there are still many buildings to comb through. 

• Much better, compared to the response in Syria and Rojava. However, there is a lot of criticism regarding the response by the government. 'You were too slow', 'You didn't come because we are Kurdish' or 'you're only helping provinces that will help your political goals', are just some of the grave accusations that President Tayyip Erdoğan is faced with.
   
• He has promised to start rebuilding within weeks and has stopped in-person education for the next semester. All public dormitories now will host survivors of the quakes. Pro-LGBTQ+ activists warn that this move may put LGBTQ people in danger, asking 'why not put them in hotels? After all, this is a tourism region, too.' In May, there will be a national election.

• Many people also shared their frustration and anger, claiming that the government didn't have a good-enough seismic design. Some say, this was not done out of bad intention. They just built structures really poorly. Some are rightfully asking, 'but how can this be? There was another very strong earthquake in 1999. More than 17,000 people died back then. Did we learn nothing?!' New laws were in fact passed after 1999 to improve safety codes, programs were created to identify poorly built structures, and a tax was introduced to help fund earthquake awareness. This was not enough, say critics. The government last week pledged to investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings and has ordered the arrest of 113 suspects.
   
• Others, especially ethnic and religious minorities such as the Kurdish people, Syrian and Afghan refugees or Alevite groups, claim that this was (also) due to the lack of financial investment, state inspection of housing quality in the region and, well, racism. 
   
• On Day 7, the security situation had gotten much worse. People, out of despair and need for food and other urgent supplies, have begun to steal from one another. Several have been arrested.

• If you are in Berlin, there will be a solidarity screening of Brother's Keeper by Ferit Karahan 
  organized by Sinema Transtopia and Goethe-Institut Hamburg (Zentrum für Internationale Kulturelle Bildung) to collect donations for those affected by the earthquake.
   
• Here are just some of the organizations you can donate to if you would like to help the people in Kurdistan, Turkey and Syria: Heyva Sor, Barzani Charity Foundation, Medico International. 

There were other natural disasters and accidents in the world last week

Egypt: Two people were killed, and 20 others were injured after a building collapses in Damanhour, Beheira Governorate. (AP)

Indonesia: Four people were killed and several houses and buildings were destroyed by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake in Papua. (Xinhua via The Star)

Russia: Seven people were killed, and nine others were injured in a gas explosion at a residential building in Novosibirsk. (AP)

Peru: Landslides triggered by heavy rains caused mudslides across villages in the Camaná Province, killing 36 people. (AP)

Austria/Switzerland: Eight people in Austria and two others in Switzerland were killed by a series of avalanches. (BBC News)

Turkey: At least eight people were killed, and 42 others were injured when a bus crashed and overturned in Afyonkarahisar Province. (ABC News)

China: At least 16 people were killed, and 66 others were injured in a multiple-vehicle collision along a highway in Changsha, Hunan. (AFP via The Straits Times)

Afghanistan: Two people were killed, and three others were injured by an avalanche in Raghistan District, Badakhshan Province. (5DariyaNews)

More you might have missed 

Recommendations

Nicaragua is a very dangerous place for independent journalists right now. They are one of the groups most persecuted by the Daniel Ortega government, according to this Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) report published on 28 October 2021on Nicaragua. Journalists are constantly stigmatized and subjected to harassment campaigns, arbitrary arrest and death threats. Many journalists have had to flee the country. (RSF)

In this episode, three journalists in two countries give their first-hand accounts of exile, harassment, and persecution. 

This was a collaboration between El Hilo and El Faro, with support from the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives.

• Quote: "Finally, Jansen, is inconsistent about how he himself views race. Basically, he dabbles in Coloured culture for the retweets, claiming to be color-blind, while at the same time identifying as “a proud Black man” when it suits him. As Jansen has stated: “Fairly early on, I thought of skin as the epidermis. I never thought of it in terms of the social gradation of human beings between better and worse.” Literally, how is this possible? How is this a sincerely held belief by someone who grew up under apartheid and on the Cape Flats?"

Music video of the week

On a funny note