Ukrainian activists mark International Transgender Day of Remembrance

A dozen activists have held the action in Kyiv to commemorate transgender people.

The International Transgender Day of Remembrance is marked on November 20. On this day, established in 1998, the world remembers those who became victims of transphobia, i.e. manifestations of prejudice and hatred towards transgender people (the people who experience a mismatch between their gender identity or gender expression and their assigned sex).

The action took place near the building of the Health Ministry of Ukraine. The activists held posters reading “Rights of transgender people = human rights”, “Stop transphobia” and others.

Few people came to the action, and it happened so not only because of rain. Most activists say that the transgender community is very reserved.

“Those, who died of transphobia, are remembered today. We have no such statistics available in Ukraine. However, the absence of figures does not give an excuse to say this problem does not exist in Ukraine. The transgender community is very reserved,” said Inna Iryskina, the action participant, the trans-advocacy expert of the NGO “Insight”.

The activists say that more than 20 transgender women have been killed in the United States this year. Recently, famous trans-activist Diana Sakayan, who had done much for the protection of the rights of transgender people in Argentina, was brutally murdered in this country.

For the Ukrainian transgender community, this day is the occasion to recall about its problems in Ukraine, where it remains virtually invisible to the public.

Thus, the Ukraine’s Health Ministry employees, whom not only health but also legal recognition of gender status of transgender people depends on, are not willing to listen to transgender people.

“We will make no statements today. We have already sent a lot of letters to the Health Ministry, but we haven’t received from at least any response,” commented Olena Shevchenko, head of the NGO “Insight”.

As a reminder, the campaign to cancel the Health Ministry’s order No.60 continues. Recently, the appeal of the NGO “T-EMA” activists was dismissed. The court ruled that the transgender persons cannot change their sex as long as they have children under the age of 18 and do not have a permanent place of residence and work.