Word: tins
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Langa is a densely packed community of matchbox houses and shacks of tin, wood and plastic sheeting crammed into every available space. For visitors it is a glimpse of a world of poverty, leavened by the locals' cheerful resolve to make the best of things. Entrepreneurs thrive in old shipping containers, converted to house everything from hair salons and driving schools to funeral parlors. In a church-run day-care centre, infants address Caucasian visitors with cries of "Abelungu!" - the Xhosa word for whites. One stop is a cookery school sponsored by city hotels, where students from Langa's poorest...
...example, transsexuals are still required to have a sex-change operation before they can change their gender in the eyes of the law. And to get the green light for surgery, they must still undergo extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations. "It's a symbolic victory," says Louis-Georges Tin, president of the Paris-based IDAHO committee, which fights homophobia and what it calls "transphobia," or discrimination against transsexuals. "Transsexuals are no longer mentally ill," he says. "They're normal citizens. But we haven't yet reached the point where they're allowed to make their own decisions instead of depending...
Some transsexuals say the country's open-minded Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, removed transsexualism from the list of mental disorders because it was an outdated classification and because she wanted to acknowledge the work transsexuals have done to further their cause. But others see a potentially more troubling motive. Tin worries that politicians may be making allowances on this front to avoid engaging in debate on legalizing gay marriage or removing barriers to allowing gay adults to adopt. (See pictures of the gay-rights movement...
...tide may be turning. At least that's what IDAHO's president hopes. The French Health Ministry has already agreed to push other countries in the E.U. to drop transsexualism from their lists of mental disorders. And that, Tin says, is a start...
...Zawacki cautioned, however, that Tin Oo's release could be a ploy on the part of the government. "His release may have been a kind of false incentive to the NLD. NLD participation in an election that it loses would greatly assist the government's inevitable claims that the election was legitimate," he said...