Strip searched and humiliated: Transgender women stopped from fleeing Ukraine by border guards
India Today
Activists have claimed that transgender women who were trying to flee Ukraine amid the war with Russia were mistreated and stopped from crossing the borders.
"Ukrainian border guards undress you and touch you everywhere," Judis, a transgender woman, recalled her struggle to cross the Ukraine border amid the war with Russia.
She recalled how strange hands searched her body and pulled her hair to check if she was wearing a wig. “You can see on their faces they’re wondering ‘what are you?’ like you’re some kind of animal or something,” she told the Guardian.
Even as Judis can legally cross the borders with other women who are being allowed passage to safety, on March 12, she was sent back after border guards determined she was a man.
Hailing from the Luhansk region, which is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, Judis fled to Kyiv before the Russian forces gained control of her home town.
“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 told the international daily.
When Judis arrived at the borders last week, she was stopped by the border guards and taken to a room where she was physically examined. After that, she was stopped from fleeing the war zone.
“Afterwards, one of the guards said, ‘you’re a guy, so get the hell out of here’, and told me I should be grateful they didn’t call the police, even though I have a legally valid document that states I am female," she told. She was asked to 'go to the war'.
