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Mama Yuli: The trans women's leader no-one messes withBy Rebecca Henschke BBC News, Jakarta 14 March 2017Mama Yuli is the leader and protector of Indonesia's transgender women - or Waria, as they are known. Though revered on some of Indonesia's thousands of islands, Waria are increasingly persecuted elsewhere, as a stricter type of Islam takes root. And this makes Mama Yuli's job a lot harder.The second time I met Mama Yuli she told me she had killed someone once. Knifed him.I scanned the heavily made-up face carefully, the eyes rimmed by fake eyelashes and bright red-painted lips, to see if she was teasing me. I decided she wasn't.Mama Yuli - Yulianus Rettoblaut, to use her full name - grew up in a remote village on the island of Papua, in the east of Indonesia. It was a lonely place to be when, at the age of 11, she started to realise she wasn't straight.Continued: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39259899