Strip searched and humiliated: Transgender ladies stopped from fleeing Ukraine by border guards

“Ukrainian border guards undress you and touch you everywhere,” Judis, a transgender girl, recalled her wrestle to cross the Ukraine border amid the warfare with Russia.

She recalled how unusual palms searched her physique and pulled her hair to examine if she was sporting a wig. “You can see on their faces they’re wondering ‘what are you?’ like you’re some kind of animal or something,” she advised the Guardian.

Even as Judis can legally cross the borders with different ladies who’re being allowed passage to security, on March 12, she was despatched again after border guards decided she was a person.

Hailing from the Luhansk area, which is managed by Moscow-backed separatists, Judis fled to Kyiv earlier than the Russian forces gained management of her dwelling city.

“As soon as I arrived in a village near the capital, my grandma’s house in Svatove was destroyed by a missile. After I left, I had no money and lived in a basement in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv. One day, a rocket hit about 150 metres from the house I was living in. Since then, I have had nightmares about how my limbs were blown off by a bomb,” she advised the worldwide every day.

When Judis arrived on the borders final week, she was stopped by the border guards and brought to a room the place she was bodily examined. After that, she was stopped from fleeing the warfare zone.

“Afterwards, one of many guards mentioned, ‘you’re a man, so get the hell out of right here’, and advised me I needs to be grateful they didn’t name the police, though I’ve a legally legitimate doc that states I’m feminine,” she told. She was asked to ‘go to the war’.

“I want to be free to do what I want in life. I will try again to cross the border because it’s my right to leave and to live. And I will not remain silent. I will not be held prisoner,” Judis said.

Another 24-year-old trans woman, Alice, from Brovary, a town near Kyiv, had a similar experience. She and her 21-year-old wife were stopped from crossing into Poland.

“They took us to a building near the border crossing. There were three officers in the room. They told us to take off our jackets. They checked our hands, arms, checked my neck to see if I had an Adam’s apple. They touched my breasts. After examining us, border guards told us we were men. We tried to explain our situation but they didn’t care,” she said.

After the imposition of martial law in Ukraine on February 14, all men aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country. Since then, approximately hundreds of trans people have attempted to cross the border.

Activists and aid workers told the Guardian, “Despite their authorized standing as ladies, dozens have been mistreated and pushed again on the borders, with many fearing for his or her lives within the occasion that Russia’s transphobic regime takes over.”

“Martial law says all males are obliged to serve in the military, so they can’t leave the country,” Olena Shevchenko, 39, a human rights defender mentioned.

“Technically, the law applies to trans people as well, including both certified trans men and trans women who had not changed their documents. But it sounds like Ukrainian border guards are preventing even trans people with a valid certificate reflecting their new gender from leaving Ukraine, and nobody knows why,” Shevchenko mentioned.