Tashnuva Anan becomes Bangladesh's first transgender news anchor

According to the International News Agency, this is for the first time a transgender has read the news on a TV channel in Bangladesh.

This is for the first time in Bangladesh, a television station has hired a transgender as a newscaster.

Tashnuva started her career in news at Boishakhi TV from March 8, International Women’s Day, the TV station said in a statement.

After reading the news bulletin for the first time she could not control her emotions and cried at the most important moment of her life.

Speaking to the media, Tishnawa described her experience while saying that she had faced social attitudes and injustices all her life in search of her identity and had been sexually abused several times. “I had also attempted four suicide attempts,”

A performer by profession, Tashnuva has been modelling and acting for a long time. This year, she also signed up for two movies, where she will play the role of a female football coach in one.

Earlier this year, Tashnuva got herself in the Brac James P Grant School of Public Health at Brac University and studied on scholarships for the Master of Public Health (MPH) programme.

Transgender are now being recognized at the government level in Bangladesh. In 2013, a law was passed to register it as a third sex, and in 2018, the right to vote was granted to them. The first religious seminary for transgender was opened in November last year.

Bangladesh’s transgender community, colloquially called “Hijra”, has been mistreated for decades. An estimated 10,000 to half a million — of Bangladesh’s population of around 160 million —  belong to the third gender community.