In Colombia, a gay person runs the risk of being a victim of threats or being shot three times in the head. Jeison Vásquez Borja, 29, was shot dead last Tuesday in Medellín. More than ten gay men have been murdered in that city this year.
Over the weekend, two women, one armed with sticks, threatened a gay couple kissing in a park in Bogota. The video in which the fight was recorded and went viral filled the citizens with motives, who called for a protest to reject the aggression.
The Constitutional Court has taken huge steps to protect the LGTBI community in terms of rights, but in everyday life, being gay in Colombia is still a risk. The fact of discrimination that became known this weekend is just a sample of the violence they suffer.
According to Medicina Legal, from January to June of this year, there were 354 victims of personal aggression because of their sexual orientation, 324 suffered abuse, and 229 experienced it within their families.
Being part of the LGBTI community is a vulnerability factor that, according to the institution’s records, is comparable to that of groups of demobilized persons or human rights defenders. In 2021, the NGO Colombia Diversa registered aggressions against 405 LGBTI people in the country: 205 homicides, 97 victims of threats, and 103 victims of police violence.
Mauricio Albarracín, deputy director of the LGBT program of Human Rights Watch (HRW), says that the violence they are victims of prevents them from enjoying their already recognized rights. “If this violence, which is daily, is not addressed, the formal gains [sentences and laws] will remain only on paper.” Albarracín points to last week’s events as a reflection of a profound problem that Colombia is in debt to resolve.
“An everyday act such as kissing ends up becoming an act of social intolerance, which can lead to the expulsion of two people from a public space or to irreversible events such as a murder,” he says. “Colombia lives a paradox: while it advances in legislation towards a more egalitarian country, the reality continues to be violent,” she continues.
Colombia has laws and public policy that have not been efficient because there has been a lack of political will, says Albarracín, and affirms that in the last four years, under the government of Iván Duque, the country experienced a setback.
“It was a lost period. There was inaction on the part of the Executive to implement what was already in place, and it was hostile in some cases, as it was with the appointments to positions of power of people who have been openly anti-rights, such as Alejandro Ordóñez, ambassador to the OAS.”
Stopping violence against LGBTI people adds to the list of challenges that the government that is about to start will have to face, Albarracín points out. “We are not starting from zero, we are not like we were 20 years ago, but it is time that this violence should be taken seriously. All state institutions must work towards the same end; specialized intervention and coordinated action are required,” he says.
Marcela Sanchez, executive director of the NGO Colombia Diversa, warns of increased crimes against the LGBTI population since 2019 and questions the lack of reliable figures. “The government has not shown its commitment to documenting these crimes, making it difficult to seek solutions. Homicides and threats have grown, and there has been no public policy to face it; there is no serious data from the State.”
The report of the Truth Commission, mentioned by Sanchez, confirms the violation of human rights to which people of diverse sexuality have historically been victims in Colombia. “One of the revelations is that there was silence on the part of the communities, who even though they were witnesses to this violence, they kept silent or encouraged it,” says Sanchez. The scene that took place this weekend in Bogota is evidence that things have not yet changed.
“Faced with the attack on a couple of men who were kissing in a park, if those neighbors had an armed group in their neighborhood, they would have asked them to remove the couple, and they would have threatened and displaced them,” he quotes a tweet he wrote over the weekend to exemplify the level of hatred that LGBTI people continue to be the target of.
María Mercedes Acosta, co-founder and general editor of the NGO Sentiido, agrees that although the country has advanced in legal, social, and cultural issues, there is still much to be done.
This weekend’s episode in Bogota is an example – “one more,” she says – of a fundamentalist discourse encouraged by the church that has moved to the streets. “It is necessary that the work of the schools be taken seriously because if sex education continues to be ignored, we will continue to see these types of scenes.”
Wilson Castañeda, director of Caribe Afirmativo, talks about the situation in Medellín to put numbers to the problem. So far, in 2022, 17 people have been murdered because of their sexual orientation.
“The events occurred mostly in the center of the city, in the evening hours, where the absence of passersby and the copying of illegal actors in drug trafficking routes and territorial control facilitated the facts” and mentioned certain factors that evidence a common pattern: they were activists, they were not victims of robbery, they had been threatened, their crimes occurred far from their homes, and there was viciousness in their deaths.
“In terms of security, the levels of risk have increased, and the ineffectiveness of the State for their protection has led to the strengthening of self-protection actions. The State has limited itself to exercising police control, and on occasions, it is the police themselves who incite violence,” says Castañeda.
David Alonzo, district director of diversity in Bogotá and activist, highlights the reaction of what happened in that city as a change and a sign of society’s rejection of violent and discriminatory actions. But it is not enough.
“If there is no national policy, all other efforts will continue to be insufficient for the needed transformation and cultural change.” Alonzo also questions the impunity that hovers around crimes against LGTBI people.
“The government line is needed to achieve the eradication of impunity. More than 93% of the cases have not been solved, which means that it has not been possible to send a strong message of rejection to this violence”, says the activist.
With information from El País
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