LGBT Rights Activist In Germany Taken To Hospital After Week-Long Hunger Strike

LGBT rights activist Mohra Barakzai was taken to the hospital on Monday evening due to weakness after a week-long hunger strike in front of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

Barakzai, who is still in the hospital, said that she will return to her tent and continue her hunger strike. Barakzai told Afghanistan International on Tuesday that her condition had improved compared to the day before, but that she was still in hospital due to an irregular heartbeat.

The LGBT rights activist said that she had entered the eighth day of the hunger strike and would return to the tent soon.

She began a hunger strike last week to recognize gender apartheid and to protest the difficult situation of LGBT people in Afghanistan.

Last year, Mohra Barakzai went on an 11-day strike in Malmö, Sweden, to highlight the situation of LGBT people in Afghanistan, and spent 150 days in a sit-in tent.

One of Barakzai's demands is to transfer LGBT people from Afghanistan to other countries.

She said that LGBT people in Afghanistan are at risk of facing death, many of them are homeless, they are not given jobs, and some of them are threatened by the Taliban and even their families.

On Monday, Diana Daneshwar, another LGBT activist in Pakistan, was taken to hospital after a five-day hunger strike.

Daneshwar’s relatives told Afghanistan International that they found her unconscious at her home around noon on Monday when a number of people from her community visited her.

Diana Daneshwar has been on a hunger strike in a Pakistani city since Thursday, September 26, to recognise "sexual and gender apartheid and genocide of the Hazaras”.