More than 1,700 transgender people have been killed worldwide over the past seven years – and those are just the violent deaths which have been reported. The latest update from Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring report lists 1,731 cases of reported killings of transgender and gender-diverse people around the globe from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2014. Details are often scant, but many cases include an extreme degree of aggression, including torture and mutilation. Of the reported deaths, 1,356 killings were in Central and South America, 155 killings in Asian countries, 112 killings in North America, 94 killings in 14 Europe, nine Africa and five in Oceania. The highest absolute numbers were in Brazil, Mexico and the United States – nations which all have organisations which monitor the rates of trans killings. Transgender Europe’s Senior Researcher Carsten Balzer says there has been a worrisome increase in killings of transgender children and youth. “In the last seven years, 131 trans and gender-diverse persons under 20 years of age have been reported murdered, accounting for 12 per cent of all reported murders where the age was known. Forty-eight of these 131 victims were under 18. An extremely distressing tendency is the fact that in the last two years five trans people under 14 have been reported murdered."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 18th May 2015 - 12:06pm