By Daniel Villarreal

Malak el-Kashif, a political activist and transgender woman living in Egypt, was arrested at her Cairo home last March after participating in a protest and was then subjected to verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Egyptian authorities for months, according to Human Rights Watch. She says she was placed in solitary confinement at a men’s prison for 135 days, where she was refused medical treatment.

“I suffered the worst verbal abuse I have ever encountered by police officers, and they forbade me from going to the bathroom for two days. They subjected me to a forced anal exam. They sexually assaulted me,” el-Kashif, 20, told the international human rights group. “Solitary confinement was the worst thing that ever happened to me; it was really affecting my mental health. I still have post-traumatic stress disorder and social phobia. I’m not the person I was.”

El-Kashif is one of 15 people who shared harrowing stories of abuse with Human Rights Watch for its recently published report “Egypt: Security Forces Abuse, Torture LGBT People.” The report’s main findings include arbitrary arrests of people thought to be LGBTQ; entrapment of gay and bisexual men through social networking and dating apps; and torture and prolonged detainment of sexual and gender minorities in state custody.

“Egyptian authorities seem to be competing for the worst record on rights violations against LGBT people in the region, while the international silence is appalling,” Rasha Younes, an LGBTQ rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated in the report. "Egypt has unabashedly continued to target and abuse LGBT people simply for who they are.” Read more via NBC