Transphobic crimes up by a THIRD in the US
Crimes against the trans community have risen significantly.
Hate crime statistics released by the FBI on Monday revealed a shocking increase in violence and threats against transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
Transphobic attacks are up from 31 incidents in 2013 to 98 in 2014.
However, trans rights activists say the actual figure could be much higher.
“We assume that this is the minimum of what’s happened,” Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), told Quartz.
“There were murders every day in January and February,” added Kylar Broadus, the founder and executive director of the Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC).
“It was just overwhelmingly scary. By March we had more deaths than we had had in all of 2014.”
Yesterday, the world remembered the 271 trans people murdered over the past twelve months – 85% of whom are believed to be American.
Trans Day of Remembrance is held to remember people who have died as a result of their actual or perceived transgender identity.
The murders took place between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2015.
Most note that the list is almost definitely longer, but many homicides against trans people go unreported.
The number of those killed has gone up from last year’s report which showed that 226 trans people were murdered.
“We in the transgender community right now are reeling,” actress Laverne Cox said of the increased transphobic murders.
Voicing her concern over the growing number of trans related crimes, she declared: “It really is a state of emergency.
“Your life should not be in danger simply for being who you are,” she added.
President Barack Obama has promised to put race-related murders and hate crimes at the forefront of his agenda, after being urged to investigate the worrying increase in trans-related killings.
Similar figures recently released in the UK revealed that transphobic hate crimes have also risen in London – by over 25%.
