Every Three Days, a Transgender Person is Murdered in the World

categories: Hate Crimes, International Gay Rights, Transgender Issues

Published July 21, 2009 @ 01:20PM PT

Trans violence

Sad, but probably not shocking. The European organization "Transgender Europe" has a new report out this week documenting worldwide violence against trans people, and the findings show an alarming increase in violence toward transgender people. Evidence presented by Transgender Europe tells the gruesome story: between January 2008 and June 2009, more than 200 trans people were murdered in the world.

Broken down, that means that every three days, a trans person is killed somewhere around the globe. And according to UN Dispatch, there's not one region of the world that's immune from transgender violence. Perhaps surprisingly, most of the violence has occurred in the Western Hemisphere:

The cases have been reported from all six World regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The majority of cases have been reported from Latin America and North America. On these continents the majority of cases have been reported from Brazil (59) and the U.S.A. (16) for 2008 and from Brazil (23), Venezuela (20), and Guatemala (10) for the first six months of 2009. Moreover, the preliminary results show a total of 11 murdered trans people reported for Colombia followed by 5 for Honduras and 4 for Mexico and Venezuela for 2008, and 6 for Mexico and 3 for Argentina, and the Dominican Republic for the first six months of 2009.

In the United States, of course, we're familiar with the face of violence toward trans folks. One has to look no further than Latiesha Green, or Angie Zapata, or Ebony Whitaker to see that for U.S. folks, this is happening in our own backyards.

Of course, what's even more frightening about the Transgender Europe report is that the 200+ murders they've documented over the past year and a half are likely a lowball figure. It's hard to collect accurate evidence on violence committed toward LGBT folks around the globe, since large amounts of violence go unreported.

The study itself is part of an ongoing campaign organized by Transgender Europe and the medical/health journal Liminalis, called The Trans Murder Monitoring Project. The goal of the project is to document trans violence throughout the globe, putting both names and faces to the epidemic.

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Comments (5)

Violence against Trans people on the basis of their sexual orientation is unjustified. Although there have been murders of Transgender people, which is unfortunate, the numbers are luckily still not high as in Brazil or Venezuela. The two countries with the two highest murder rates of Trans people still have a lot to go to provide the rights and protections which Trans people need and is why there it's higher. In the United States, murders against Trans people must decrease.

Posted by Edwin Bonilla on 07/21/2009 @ 01:36PM PT
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Those who would kill others simply for being different are incredibly stupid and childish in my opinion...

Posted by Thomas McHugh on 07/21/2009 @ 04:13PM PT
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Edwin, trans people are not murdered because of their sexual orientation, i.e., for being gay or lesbian. (In fact, many trans people are straight, i.e., attracted to people of the gender opposite their own gender identity.) Instead, they are murdered because others find the fact they don't conform to people's expectations based on their assigned birth sex and gender, i.e., their gender identity or expression, offensive and threatening. This is an extremely important distinction when it comes to discussions regarding the scope of hate crimes protections and nondiscrimination laws, and was the basis for the controversy over the removal of gender identity protections from ENDA in 2007. In addition, I and many other trans people find it disrespectful when people fail to acknowledge this distinction, since it indicates a lack of understanding and willingness to learn about our unique concerns.

Posted by Abigail Jensen on 07/22/2009 @ 09:09AM PT
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I've seen this ultra-right crap about anti-christ after every election since Nixon. Tripe peddling tripe about tripe.

Pathetic

Posted by Fester 60613 on 07/22/2009 @ 03:41PM PT
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YIKES! I COMMENTED ON THE WONG POST! IGNORE!

Posted by Fester 60613 on 07/22/2009 @ 03:41PM PT
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Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.