Complaint against hate video targeting Indian-origin transgenders

An organisation that governs and cares for the transgender community in Malaysia has lodged a police complaint on a hate video that sought physical violence against the community.

The Malaysian Tamil Thirunangai Organisation lodged the complaint at the Dang Wangi police station in Kuala Lumpur after a group of Indian-Malaysian transgender women complained about the video that went viral on the social media earlier this week.

The first part of the video recording showed photos of several transgender women of various ethnicities, mostly Indian, taken from their social media accounts, Malay Mail online reported recently.

In a narration in Tamil, a man could be heard saying "transgenders take drugs to 'change' from men to women".

The unidentified man also warned of an increase in the number of trans-woman and a fall of male population.

The voice then urged viewers to take "physical action", question and challenge the transgenders to "save" the country and the Tamil community.

The second part of the video was an audio taken from a debate in India in which a person was heard saying that "cow's milk contains high level of estrogens hormone and drinking it can turn men into women," the report said.

"Immediately, the community felt fear. Fear to go out, fear to do normal things, fear to live day-to-day life, worrying what is going to happen to them next," the group's president Suriya Ramaiah was quoted as saying.

The organisation claimed that the voice in the video had an ethnic Indian accent that is spoken in Malaysia and Singapore.

According to Ramaiah, she received complaints about the video from her friends who reside in Singapore and Australia.

Activists estimate that there are nearly 60,000 transgenders living in Malaysia.