Out of work and without support: Trans* life in Azerbaijan during a pandemic

“Aysu and other sex workers simply have to go out into the street amid the lockdown. Who would want to put their life at risk? Sex workers are persecuted and routinely harassed by the police, anyway,” says Javid Nabiyev, an LGBTQI+ rights activist now living in Germany.

Nazrin has almost resigned herself to the fact that she will no longer be able to find another job in Azerbaijan (we say “almost” because after the interview she timidly asked the film crew if trans* people can be employed as journalists). However, the strict lockdown has deprived her of this income as well. She is now afraid of going outside after the murder of Aysu, and also because she is afraid of being fined 200 AZN (about 130 USD) for violating the lockdown.

Aysu and her friends had been fined several times. “You cannot go anywhere the police are patrolling the entire city. No, they do not detain us, but they impose fines that we are unable to pay right now. And then they begin harassing us, saying things like ‘What kind of people are you’, ‘you are neither women nor men’, ‘who needs you’,” Nazrin says. Now they have to, as Nazrin put it, “work over the phone”.

However, calls have almost stopped coming in in recent months, too.

“After the pandemic started, people got scared, we got fewer calls, they do not call us at all. Nobody comes anymore,” Nazrin complains.