Yahoo! News - Police Bust Transvestite PageantOddly Enough - Reuters
Police Bust Transvestite Pageant
Wed Oct 30,10:44 AM ET
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian police, led by religious authorities enforcing Islamic law, raided a transvestite beauty pageant and arrested 80 people in a town in southern Johor state, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.
The Star newspaper carried photographs of some contestants, hair piled higher than their heels and dressed in white satin evening gowns, being herded out of a lounge bar in Muar, where the "Queen of PaperDolls 2002" contest was being held.
There were around 200 spectators and contestants in the lounge when the police raided, and several were caught hiding in cupboards and in the ceiling above a toilet, the newspaper said.
The transvestites are likely to be charged with cross-dressing and acting like women in a public place under the Islamic sharia criminal code which applies only to Muslims. The offences carry a maximum six-month jail term and 1,000 ringgit ($263) fine, it added.
Police said the organizer did not have a license to hold a contest.
Multiracial Malaysia's religious authorities stopped ethnic Malay Muslim women from contesting for the Miss Malaysia title in the 1990s, and the competition is now dominated by Chinese and Indian women.
The federal government determines criminal law throughout Malaysia, but state religious authorities enforce the sharia code, which covers religious matters and some aspects of social morality.
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