Transgender prisoners in Hong Kong suffer sexual assault, denial of hormones

When Filipina Navarro Luigi Recasa was sentenced to prison for a drug conviction two years ago, at just 20 years old, she couldn’t have been ready to go to a male prison ward. She couldn’t have expected that she would be escorted by male correctional officers to the male toilets – although she still has her penis, she’s been living as a female since she was 12 years old, and has fully formed breasts. They also cut off her supply of hormones that she’d been taking for eight years.

Prison in Hong Kong can be an ordeal for transgender offenders. All such prisoners are sent to the maximum-security Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre, because being transgender is still considered a mental illness in Hong Kong. And regardless of the gender the prisoner identifies with, they are assigned to a male or female ward based on identity documents, such as a birth certificate or ID card.

NGO Midnight Blue works with and records the allegations of transgender inmates. One of its advocates, Rain Lo Lan-wai, said that since 2013, she’s heard desperate complaints from some 40 male-to-female transgender offenders. They’ve allegedly had their hair forcibly shaved off; body searches carried out by male correctional officers; hormones have been denied; interpreters refused; they have being verbally and sexually abused by prison officers; and they have been refused bras and given male clothes to wear.

“The procedures and policies that our client was subjected to were grossly unfair, and led to major repercussions both physically and mentally,” says Patricia Ho, Recasa’s attorney from human rights firm Daly & Associates. “We’ve encountered other cases, including people who are so depressed about the conditions under which they are detained in Siu Lam that they’ve attempted suicide.”

One such example is a post-operative female who Lo came into contact with in 2013, also in Siu Lam’s male ward, who attempted suicide. Lo said the officers had forcibly cut her hair and then she’d stopped eating. It wasn’t until her eventual suicide attempt that Midnight Blue heard reports that Siu Lam had begun to ease its policies on mandatory head shaving and sometimes allowed inmates access to hormones.