“They were mostly arresting trans women who never ever got the opportunity to find a job, who were kicked out of their family houses, they were homeless for a long period of time, who actually dropped out of school because they were bullied at some point. “Trans people face the most discrimination – they’re visible,” Samhat said. Helem’s community centre provides basic facilities for people wishing to stay overnight if they feel unsafe. Today, at least 17 people are detained in Hbeish, mostly transgender people. Such physical mistreatment appears now to have stopped. Most of the people rounded up in the raid were sent to the Hbeish detention centre, and Helem’s ensuing work highlighted torture there. “It felt impossible at one point to get this going again, but with the Hammam Agha raid it was my first incident with such an arrest file … and it was a major push to try to do something about it.” It had zero dollars in its bank account,” says Samhat. Helem had lost its community centre, its offices, all of its funds.
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“When I joined, it was a trial to see if things would work again or not. Her arrival coincided with a Lebanese security forces raid on a local bathhouse, the Hammam al-Agha, which resulted in the arrests of 36 people. When Samhat, 31, joined four years ago, the organisation was almost moribund. Since then Helem’s reputation has spread beyond Lebanon throughout the Arab world and several similar organisations have been set up, including the NGO Shams in Tunisia, fighting for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.Īfsaneh Rigot of British human rights group Article 19 said Helem was “an important and necessary LGBTQ oasis in the Middle East and North Africa region” and “a refuge for some of the most marginalised people in Lebanon”.īut progress has not been straightforward. But on the contrary we just kept on working.” The authorities neither rejected nor approved the request, said Genwa Samhat, Helem’s executive director, in a sign that meant “‘we won’t reject you but we will make your work really hard that you’d eventually stop’.
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Helem was set up as an underground movement nearly 20 years ago and, despite never having received official registration by the authorities, has clung to life.
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When they see themselves in the mirror, their eyes start shining and what they can see in the mirror, they feel this person looks much more like the way they see themselves.” “Some people have just found out about their gender identity, and they are intrigued to use makeup to intensify it, like trans women,” he says. In his bag he now carries a mobile phone that serves as a 24-hour emergency hotline. He is a case worker, dealing mainly with those who have fallen foul of Lebanon’s infamous article 534, which criminalises “unnatural sexual acts”.
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Wael joined Helem (which means “dream” in Arabic) two and half years ago as a volunteer before becoming one of only three paid staff seven months ago. Helem has been described as an ‘important and necessary LGBTQ oasis in the Middle East and North Africa region’. Helem’s three paid staff (from left): Joseph Aoun, Genwa Samhat and Wael Hussein.