Many of us cried like little children—We had lost everything we worked for our entire lives.
A chokoraa like me cannot report a rape case and have it followed up, like people with stable homes. Where do you even start when you do not know the person who assaulted you?
Returning to my brother, I did not hesitate. I remember not understanding what I was doing, but I felt the rumbling of the gun shot pass through me. It was as if someone else pulled the trigger.
The guards mentally and physically tortured me. They called me a terrorist, rioter, traitor, jihadi. I wasn’t allowed to brush my teeth or read books, and I could barely sleep in my tiny, filthy, isolated cell.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speach, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel said "The lights and shadows of life must be shared".
The cops stripped me naked and beat me with sticks and belts. I'd cry, scream, beg — urinating was severely painful. They didn't give me water and food for five days. I had to chew my clothes. I was in so much pain I could have eaten grass.
I fight with the dictatorship so that my people can be free.
I managed to escape. I fled from the hell that held me captive. Thank God I still have a voice to say what happened to me.
In our community, you are either a man or a woman. I grew up as a man due to my community’s expectations and having been born in the 70s, a time when no one knew about intersex people. I was therefore forced to live and act like a man.
There were times I wanted to give up on everything. My life, my husband, my family. Everything.
The robbery lasted for a few minutes before the scene went quiet and everyone rushed inside.
Pablo Hasél was imprisoned for two years under the charges of “glorification of terrorism” after calling Spain's king a gangster on Twitter.