IDAHOT transmurders in 2014
Transgender Europe:
IDAHOT Press Release: May 1st 2014
Alarming figures: Transgender Europe’s Trans
Murder Monitoring project unveils interactive map of more than
1,500 reported murders of trans people since January 2008
On May 17th, The International Day
Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) is being held in
more than 120 countries around the world. The IDAHOT is meant
to raise awareness regarding the ongoing discrimination and
violence committed by states, societies and individuals against
lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people on various
scales, from homo- and transphobic legislations and forms of
state repression to hate crimes including insults, attacks and
murders. The International Day Against Homophobia and
Transphobia (IDAHOT) was created in 2004 to draw the attention
of policymakers, opinion leaders, social movements, the public
and the media to this issue. The 17th of May was
chosen to remember the removal of homosexuality from the
International Classification of Diseases of the World Health
Organization (WHO) on May 17th 1990. The IDAHOT 2014
global focus issue is “Freedom of Expression”.
Trans Murder Monitoring launches an update for
IDAHOT 2014. The Trans Murder
Monitoring (TMM) project was initiated in April 2009 in order to
systematically monitor, collect and analyse reports of homicides
of trans and gender variant people worldwide. Updates of the
preliminary results are published on the website of the
‘Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide’ (TvT) research
project two to three times a year. Every
year in May, Transgender Europe provides a special update of the
TMM results for the International Day
Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) so as to assist activists worldwide in raising
public awareness of hate violence against trans and gender
variant people.
The TMM IDAHOT 2014 update has revealed a total
of 1,509 cases of reported killings of trans and gender
variant people from January 1st 2008 to March 31st
2014. The results are presented in form of tables, name
lists, and maps. In addition an interactive map visualises a
great portion of the 1,509 reported murders of trans and gender
variant people that the TMM has documented since January 2008.
These data and advocacy tools can be accessed on the TvT
website:
In the first three months of 2014, already 75
reported murders of trans people have been registered.
Sadly, from 1 January 2014 to 31 March 2014, the
TMM already registered 75 murders in 13 countries. These are
only preliminary results, and the numbers are likely to grow
even larger during the course of the year. While often the
actual circumstances of the killings remain obscure due to
lacking investigation and reports, many of the cases documented
involve an extreme extent of aggression, including torture and
mutilation. Many cases are not investigated properly by the
authorities.
Apart from these 75 reported murders in 2014, the
ever-growing TMM archive has registered numerous cases in 61
different countries since 2008, most of which hardly received
any public attention at all.
The IDAHOT 2014
update reveals a total of 1,509 reported killings of trans and
gender variant people in 61 countries worldwide from January 1st
2008 to March 31st 2014.
Cases have been
reported from all major World Regions (Africa, Asia, Central and
South America, Europe, North America, and Oceania), evoking an
evermore gruesome picture, especially given the very partial
knowledge we are able to gain in many places.
Throughout all six
world regions, the highest absolute numbers have been found in
countries with strong trans movements and trans and gender
variant people’s strong visibility, and/or trans or LGBT
organizations that do a professional monitoring:
Brazil (602), Mexico (160), Venezuela (81),
Colombia (80), Honduras (65), Guatemala (36), and the
Dominican Republic (31) in Central and South America, the USA
(94) in North America, Turkey (35) and Italy (27) in Europe,
and India (35) and the Philippines (29) in Asia.
The close connection
between the existence of strong trans movements and professional
monitoring on the one hand, and highest absolute numbers of
reports, on the other hand, point to a worrisome question: the
question of unreported cases. Beside the need for mechanisms to
protect trans and gender variant people, this connection also
shows the need for strong trans communities and organizations,
which are capable of professional monitoring and reporting of
violence against trans and gender variant people. Furthermore
this connection results in the fact, that the figures show only
the tip of the iceberg of homicides of trans and gender variant
people on a worldwide scale.
Almost 1,200 reported murders of trans and gender
variant people in Central and South America since 2008
The new result
update moreover reveals that since January 2008:
1,188 killings of trans and gender variant people
have been reported in Central
and South America, which account for
79 % of the globally reported murders of trans people since
January 2008. In this region, there has been the strongest
increase in reports and with 23 countries Central and South
America is the best documented region.
124 killings of trans and gender variant people have been
reported in Asia in
16 countries;
98 killings of trans and gender variant people have been
reported in North
America;
87 killings of trans and gender variant people have been
reported in Europe
in 12 countries;
8 killings of trans and gender variant people have been
reported in Africa
in 4 countries;
4 killings of trans and gender variant people have been
reported in Oceania in
4 countries.
It is important to
note that these cases are those that could be found through
Internet research and through cooperation with trans
organizations and activists. In most countries, data on murdered
trans people are not systematically produced and it is
impossible to estimate the numbers of unreported cases.
The alarming figures
demonstrate once more that there is an urgent need to react to
the violence against trans and gender variant people and to seek
mechanisms to protect them. Some international trans activists
even started to introduce the term ‘transcide’ to reflect the
continuously elevated level of deadly violence against trans and
gender variant people on a global scale and a coalition of NGOs
from South America and Europe started the “Stop Trans Genocide”
campaign.
Attached to this
press release you can find tables showing the details and a
map, which demonstrates the absolute figures of reports found
worldwide since January 2008.
A worrisome result of the TMM IDAHOT 2014
is the significant increase of reported murders of minors. In 2013 25 murdered trans and gender variant
persons under 20 years have been reported murdered, half of them
have been under 18 years, thus making 2013 the year with the
highest number of murdered minors since the start of the Trans
Murder Monitoring. This gruesome development continued in the
first three months of 2014 in which already 9 trans and gender
variant people under 20 years have been reported murdered, six
of them have been under 18 years old. Among these 6 murdered
minors in 2014 were an 8-year-old trans girl, who was beaten to
death on February 18th 2014 in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, by her father who wanted to teach her to behave like a
man, and 14-year-old Vanessa who - after receiving death threats
- fled to her grandmother’s house in Angelica, Brazil, where she
was found strangled on March 10th 2014. Among the 12
murdered minors in 2013 were a 13-year old trans girl, who has
been found strangled in the city of Macaiba in Brazil on June 9th
2013, a 14-year old trans girl, who has been found strangled in
the city of Ibipora in Brazil on October 15th 2013,
and also 16-year-old „Dwayne“ Jones, who was kicked out of her
home with 14, and on July 22nd 2013 attended for the
first time a party in female clothing in St. James, Jamaica,
where she was chased and brutally murdered by party-goers, who
formed a mob, when they realized that she was a trans person.
Already in February 2008, at the beginning of the TMM reporting
period, 15-year-old Leticia King was shot twice in the head by a
14-year-old classmate in front of the class, in Oxnard, USA.
In total 121 murders of trans and gender
variant people under 20 years have been reported in 17
countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe,
and North America since January 2008: 14 in 2008, 19 in 2009, 13 in 2010, 21 in 2011,
20 in 2012, 25 in 2013 and 9 in the first three months of 2014.
While the documentation of killings of trans
and gender variant people is indispensable for demonstrating the
shocking extent of human rights violations committed against
trans and gender variant people
on a global scale, there is also a need for in-depth research of
various other aspects related to the human rights situation of
trans and gender variant people.
Therefore, Transgender Europe developed the Trans Murder
Monitoring project into the ‘Transrespect versus Transphobia
Worldwide’ research project (TvT). TvT is a comparative,
ongoing qualitative-quantitative research project, which
provides an overview of the human rights situation of trans and gender variant people in different parts of the world and develops
useful data and advocacy tools for international institutions,
human rights organizations, the trans movement and the general
public. In November 2012 Transgender Europe published the TvT
research report “TRANSRESPECT VERSUS TRANSPHOBIA WORLDWIDE - A
Comparative Review of the Human-rights Situation of
Gender-variant/Trans People”, which discusses and contextualizes
the key findings of the TvT project. You can download the
research report here:
If you have further questions or if you want to
support the research project, please contact the TvT research
team:
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