I was disgusted when reading the report Stripped off her clothes and dignity .

How can public officers (or any human) be so inhumane towards a fellow human being? It sounds like what the American soldiers did to the Iraqi prisoners. The police officers who were responsible for humiliating Mumtaz should be severely punished so as to be a deterrent ro other police personnel. All the personnel who knew what their colleagues did to Mumtaz and yet did nothing to stop are equally guilty of the crime. This incident should be considered as sexual assault. Mumtaz should sue these people.

Transsexuals are humans just like any of us. Transformation of sex is not illegal by the law of our country. However, they have been put in the most difficult position of not being allowed to change their sexual identity officially. I believe this is not the first and the last case of authorities and the society being abusive towards transsexuals.

But by the look of it, due to whatever reasons, the number of transsexuals are on the rise. We have to accept that we have a problem. As a caring society we should get to the bottom of the problem. Let us not sweep them (the transsexuals) under the carpet and deal with them only an ad-hoc basis.

Personally, I would rather recognise their sex change because this is the life they have chosen after going through a lot of misery. We did not help them to overcome their emotional crises. They deserve to have a happy life. Although in religion this is not allowed, what is done is done. We should be helping them to be useful citizens and let God decide on their fate. After all, in Islam, all sins will be forgiven if one is repentant, except the sin of 'shirik'. God's mercy upon His creations is beyond us.

I know some quarters will say that by allowing them to change their sex officially, we will be encouraging sex changes in the future. But why judge them after they have made their decision? Why didn't we do anything when they needed help with their identity? We will have serious problems if the number of transsexuals increases in our society. We should seek the root cause and tackle the problem.

Parents and society should be educated on how not prevent their children from becoming transsexuals and society must recognise them at an early stage and offer some form of a rehabilitation programme. We are hypocrites when we accept some of them or their precursors (the 'lembut' men) as public figures or celebrities but shun them the moment they cross dress or desire a sex change.

Sometimes, I think in this country you need a VVIP to experience a particular problem before the government is serious about doing anything. We get the National Heart Institute after Dr Mahathir Mohamad had a bypass, we have Makna after Farid Ariffin's daughter had leukemia and hopefully, breast cancer treatments would now be more affordable.

It would seem that the cause for the transsexuals will have to be championed by a VIP for only then will our society will take them seriously. Any VIP with transsexual tendencies? Perhaps he or can understand better their problems than anyone else.