DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) – A Bangladeshi satellite television station has hired the country’s first transgender news anchor and hopes the appointment will help change society.
Tashnuva Anan Shishir, who previously worked as a rights activist and actress, debuted on Monday, International Women’s Day, on Boishakhi TV in Dhaka. She read a three-minute news bulletin and cried as her colleagues applauded and cheered.
“I was very nervous, I felt so emotional, but I had on my mind that I had to overcome this ordeal, this last test,” said Shishir, 29, in an interview Tuesday.
Born Kamal Hossain Shishir, she said that in her early teens she found herself trapped in a man’s body and acting like a woman. She said relatives, relatives and neighbors started teasing her and she was bullied and sexually exploited.
She began to feel like it was impossible to live on and tried to commit suicide, she said.
The worst thing that happened was that her father stopped talking to her and said she was the reason her family started to lose face, Shishir said.
“I left home,” she said.
She moved from her family’s home in a southern coastal area to a solitary life in the capital, where she underwent hormone therapy, worked for charities and performed with a local theater group. In January, she started studying public health at a university in Dhaka, which she continues alongside her job at the TV station.
Bangladesh officially has more than 10,000 transgender people, but activists say the actual number is much higher in the country with more than 160 million people. The LGBT community faces social isolation, sexual abuse and other forms of harassment. Finding a job is very difficult, and many live off begging or selling sex.
Since 2013, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has allowed transgender people to identify themselves as a separate gender. They were given the right to vote in 2018.
Some changes are already visible.
In November, a charity group opened Bangladesh’s first Islamic school for the transgender community.
Boishakhi TV said it wanted to be part of the changes and has hired a second transgender person in its drama department.
“Our prime minister has taken many steps for transgender people. Encouraged by such steps, we hired two transgender people. We want society’s attitudes to change through these appointments, ”said Tipu Alam Milon, the station’s deputy director.