Zi Faámelu was getting desperate. It was five days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, five days since President Volodymyr Zelensky had declared martial law, and the 31-year-old musician, artist, and Instagram influencer knew she had to get out of Kyiv — and fast. She’d been trapped in her apartment, listening to the shelling around her. She ran out of food so she kept a knife close by. She was the last person in her apartment building, and she was scared of anyone trying to enter her home.
Like everyone else in Ukraine, Faámelu was worried that her building might get bombed next. But Faámelu’s fear ran deeper — she is one of many transgender women who fear for their lives in a war-torn country where, until just six years ago, people could be institutionalized for transitioning. Not only is Faámelu fighting bigotry and proving she’s a woman daily, her passport still classifies her as “male.”All men between the ages of 18 and 60 had to sign up for the army because martial law was in effect. So not only was Faámelu afraid of being harmed by Russian bombs, she was also afraid of being forced to fight. “I don’t want to shoot people, I don’t want to kill anyone,” Faámelu tells Rolling Stone. “I’d rather die.”
According toThe United Nations Refugee Agency has released a report for 2021.LBGTQ persons are constantly subject to violence and harm when trying to flee their country during an emergency situation. Transgender people in particular can have a hard time crossing country borders if their legal documents don’t match their identities. They may be subject to body checks or even detained, and could be subject to further abuse. In 2016, Ukraine’s year of transgender institutionalization, was also abolished. According to a survey on human rights, the country is ranked 39th. According to ILGA Europe, a human rights advocacy organization, this is a list of 49 European countries that support their LBGTQI+ communities. Since then, Ukraine has taken steps to decrease transgender people’s evasive protocol. Transgender people don’t have to be hospitalized. According to KyivPride’s LBGTQI+ activist group KyivPride.However, transgender persons must have a valid psychiatric diagnosis for either gender dysphasia or transsexualism. Validation usually takes about two weeks and involves consultations with psychiatrists.
“Transgender activists in Ukraine were fighting for years to make the procedure [to] transition much easier,”Lenny Emson is the director of KyivPride.
Emson says that some people didn’t have the opportunity to change their gender marker, and, in the middle of the war, KyivPride is still working to get people the appropriate document changes to get them out of the country. Some transgender women, like Faámelu, never got the chance to get their passport changed and were still traumatized by the old requirements to transition in Ukraine.
Faámelu has 16,500 followers on Instagram and says she’s well-known in Ukraine. She was also a part of the main Ukrainian reality show. Star Factory,2008 In 2008, she was on. Star Factory Finale.After coming out as transgender in 2018, she was officially on The Voice Ukraine Faámelu gained a fan base from the show for her strong voice and personality. Over the years, Faámelu has remained in the public eye in Ukraine. Her following, however, is what she believes is the reason Faamelu had difficulty leaving Ukraine. She was easy to recognize.
Faámelu was still determined to leave Ukraine. Faamelu reached out to friends to ask if they could drive her to Romanian. The friend agreed and they set off. She claims they were stopped at the first border checkpoint because the border patrol knew her identity.
“They said, ‘You think you will go through? You will go back,’” says Faámelu. Her friend drove her to a cafe, where she says she stayed awake all night, coming up with a way out of Ukraine. In an attempt to get help, Faámelu turned to her Instagram followers, pleading for someone with “power” — or even the United Nations — to help. In one Instagram story, Faámelu wrote, “I left Kyiv! I will try to cross the border in the following days.” In another, she wrote, “Today I was crossing the border inside the country and the border guard said to my face ‘Go through, but know … we don’t like people like you.’” In a final story, Faámelu posted a video of her sitting in a car, wearing a brown hoodie, her blond hair tied back, and crying. “Can anyone help me?” Faámelu sobbed. “Any human rights organizations, help me.”
That didn’t happen. Eventually, though, Faámelu got in touch with friends in Germany, who sent a driver from Romania to her. “This driver took me to another Romanian checkpoint in another city,” says Faámelu. “We slept there for a night, and the next day we went to that second checkpoint.”
When Faámelu and the driver were stopped, they handed the border police passports and €3,000 to try to bribe their way out of the country, something Faámelu said is not uncommon.
They didn’t take it. This time, Faámelu says, she was forced to go to a military enforcement office, where she would be set to train alongside men for combat. The office allowed her to go and collect her belongings that night with the instruction to return to camp the next day. As Faámelu and the driver got back into the car, he turned to her, and she remembers him saying, “Can you swim? It is the only option, to swim across the Sighetu border, through the Danube River, illegally. So you will be a refugee, but you will be breaking the law.”
After realizing that swimming was the only option, Faámelu says, she was covered in chills. They drove to a forest close to the border. She wrapped her phone, along with her passports from her country, in a plastic bag. Then she put it in her bra. She says that the driver parked her car and they walked together in the darkness. When she got to the place where she’d jump, she remembers hearing soldiers screaming her name. In a life or death moment, Faámelu jumped.
“I ran for my life. I jumped from the edge, like three meters down to the ground full of stones,”She said.
She then crawled to the watery swamp next to the river. Faámelu says she could hear the soldiers following her, so she hid in bushes before getting into the violent waters.
“I felt like a criminal, but I’m not a criminal, I’m a refugee,”She said.
While fighting the current trying to swim as fast as she could to Romania, Faámelu says there was a moment when she almost gave up. “[I thought], you’ve survived for so many years — maybe it’s OK to let go,”She said. “It’s OK if they get me, I’m done.”She pushed on and finally reached Romania. “I almost drowned. I drank so much water,”She said. “I felt exhausted and was swimming [with] the last energy you have. I swam, and somehow I reached that shore, but I thought it was still Ukraine. There was a field next [to cross]. It was like a marathon.”
In Romania, Faámelu says, the police who found her were shocked that a woman had to swim to get out of Ukraine. They took her to the police station, asking her questions, before taking her to a refugee center where she was safe. Faámelu believes, however, that back in Ukraine, the man who helped her was arrested and is in jail.
Now, Faámelu is safe in Germany, where she has been since March 10. Although she’s now a criminal in her home country, she says that she felt the need to tell her story and hopefully inspire other trans women to find a way out of Ukraine. “Trans women are very invisible in Ukraine,”She said. “They are in danger. They’re waiting for my story to be out, how I cross the border, so they can do it.”