The decision addressed as a liberal corrective as homosexual relations are criminalized with up to seven years in prison.
· Kuwait court criminalize transgender
The constitutional court of Kuwait has hit down a controversial law long used to criminalize transgender people by restricting the “imitation of the opposite sex.”
The decision was addressed as a liberal corrective to the conservative politics in Kuwait. Homosexual relations are criminalized with up to seven years in prison per the Gulf Arab sheikhdom.
The court of Kuwait ordered that the law lay down the maximum punishment for cross-dressing is a fine of $3,300 or one year in prison.
The inadequate law is made to keep under control those who dress and behave like the opposite sex. The court says that it is “inconsistent with the constitution’s keenness to make sure and safeguard personal freedom.” Even after the long weeks of steadiness and years of campaigning by human rights groups.
Whereas the Amnesty International welcomed the overturning of the penal code’s Article 198 as “a breakthrough” for the rights of transgender people in the region.
Lynn Maalouf, deputy director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa division, said, “Article 198 was rottenly discriminatory, overly inadequate. In the first place, it should never have been accepted into law.” However, driving caution regarding the decision’s conclusive impact and enforcement.
Over the conservative Arabian Peninsula, the same laws criminalize transgender expression. All around the Arab world, transgender people, gays, and lesbians people suffer socially as well as legal discrimination. Ever there are other terrifying obstacles to living their lives openly.
On 16th February, conservative Islamist lawmakers in Kuwait blasted the court ruling as shameful and affirmed to fight it.
Maalouf added that the Kuwaiti authorities “must also straight away stop arbitrary arrests of transgender people. In addition to this, all charges and convictions should drop against them.”
Last year in October, one transgender woman Maha al-Mutairi was sentenced to two years in prison for “imitating the opposite sex online,” Human Rights reported it as they came to know about the same. At the same time, she remains in jail at Kuwait’s Central Prison for men.
Edited by- Subbuthai Padma
Published by- Radhika. N
