Sex Change Couple Arrested in Pakistan
CNN reports that police have arrested a wife and her husband, who was born a woman and underwent sex reassignment surgery 16 years ago, and accused them of lying about the husband’s gender to a court in eastern Pakistan.
The case pits the bride’s father, who wants to annul his daughter’s wedding on the grounds that it is against Islam for two women to marry, against the couple, who said they married to protect the bride from being sold into marriage to pay off her uncle’s gambling debts.
The husband, Shumail Raj, 31, first brought the case to court, appealing for protection from harassment by their relatives. But earlier this month the Lahore High Court ordered the arrest of Raj and his wife, Shahzina Tariq, 26, for lying to the court.
Raj told the court he is male, but a court-appointed panel ruled that Raj is a woman, whose breasts and uterus were removed in sex-change surgery.
This report is in contrast to what Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, had to say recently at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2007. There Aziz said, “Very often we have seen the high costs of exclusion.” Of course he was talking about something else but I really don’t care. At the forum Pakistan was promoted as a progressive place to do business - apparently part of that business involves selling women to pay off debts.
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