A young transgender woman is feared dead after she posted what appears to be a suicide note online accusing her family of forcing her to detransition.
Eden Knight, 23, from Saudi Arabia but living in the US, claims her family hired "fixers" and a lawyer in Washington DC to return her to Saudi Arabia.
Transgender people face severe repression in the Middle Eastern country.
A scheduled Twitter post on Eden's account opened with: "If you’re reading this, I’ve already killed myself."
She went on to explain she had been pressured to return to Saudi Arabia and then denied access to her hormone medication.
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Another tweet by an account apparently belonging to her family announced the death of a “young man” with the same legal name as Knight.
Friends say that they have not heard from her in over a day and a half and believe that she has passed away.
Bailee Daws, 27, a close friend of Ms Knight’s said: “I don’t have a doubt in my mind that she’s dead.
Friends believe she took her own life (@CYBERANGELFAERY/Twitter)
She had been taking HRT (@CYBERANGELFAERY/Twitter)“It’s horrible to say, but it’s not speculative at this point.”
Daws is now part of a group of friends collecting evidence about Eden's fate.
Knight had been attending an American high school in the suburbs of Washington DC and then an international school in Riyadh before studying computer science at George Mason University.
She was reportedly on an international scholarship that ran out before she could graduate, causing her visa to expire.
Because of her trans identity, she was “extremely terrified” of being deported back to Saudi Arabia and hoped to claim asylum in the US.
She had began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in 2022.
This had improved her mental health, and she became highly active in LGBT+ and left-wing circles on American social media.
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Around August, Knight was allegedly contacted by two Americans who offered to resolve her disagreements with her parents, whom she described in her final message as “strict conservative Muslims”.
According to the message, the fixers introduced her to a Saudi lawyer who provided her with food and shelter while pressuring her to stop HRT and live as a man.
She wrote: "At a certain point, I realised I was entirely dependent on Bader for food and shelter, and that if I ran away, he could easily find my location, and since I was illegal, I would have just been deported to Saudi. I subconsciously gave up, I was too tired."
She flew back to Saudi Arabia where she claimed her parents regularly searched her belongings and electronic devices while calling her a “failure” and an “abomination”, and she tried to stay on HRT by hiding her drugs but was found out twice.
The message closes: "I wanted to be a leader for people like me, but that wasn’t written to happen. I hope that the world gets better for us. I hope our people get old. I hope we get to see our kids grow up to fight for us. I hope for trans rights world wide.
"Goodbye."
Ms Knight’s partner, known on Twitter as Parker, wrote: “Rest in peace, Eden. I will carry you on my shoulders for the rest of my life. Your life will carry meaning. You touched the lives of so many people. I am forever grateful to have gotten to know you.”
The Samaritans is available 24/7 if you need to talk. You can contact them for free by calling 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or head to the website to find your nearest branch. You matter.
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