Bangladesh’s first transgender news anchor debuts on National TV

Bangladesh’s first transgender news presenter broke stereotypes by making a fantastic debut on national television. After facing years of discrimination, being able to achieve a feat this huge in a conservative country moved Tashnuva Anan Shishir to tears.

Tashnuva Anan Shishi delivered a three-minute news bulletin with the private broadcast channel Boishakhi TV on International Women’s Day, a landmark moment for transgender rights and equality in the south-Asian country home to an estimated 1.5 million transgender people

Born Kamal Hossain Shishir, she discovered in her early teens she was trapped in a man’s body. She says she was sexually assaulted and bullied for years. “The bullying was so unbearable I attempted suicide four times. My father stopped talking to me for years,” said Shishir, 29. She fled her home in a southern coastal district to live alone in the capital Dhaka, and then in the central city of Narayanganj.

In January, Shishi also became the first transgender person in Bangladesh to study for a master’s in public health at the James P Grant School of Public Health in Dhaka.

The LGBT community faces widespread discrimination in the South Asian country, with a colonial-era law still in place punishing gay sex with prison, though enforcement is rare.

Bangladesh is home to an estimated 1.5 million transgender people, who face rampant discrimination and violence and are often forced to live by begging, the sex trade or crime.