A #Shout declares a state of emergency for transvestites and trans people

Presentes reproduces the speech read. From the Argentine trans and travesti movement: We want to denounce how the neoliberal policies of the Macri government are having a devastating impact on the most vulnerable sectors of civil society, primarily transvestites, trans people, and trans migrants in our greater homeland. Faced with this brutal increase in hate crimes, transfemicides/travesticides such as…

Presentes reproduces the speech read.thumb_img_0662_1024 From the Argentine trans and travesti movement: We want to denounce how the neoliberal policies of the Macri government are having a devastating impact on the most vulnerable sectors of civil society, primarily transvestites, trans people, and trans migrants in our greater homeland. Faced with this brutal increase in hate crimes, transfemicides/travesticides like that of our comrade Amancay Diana Sacayán—a grassroots activist and human rights defender, murdered on October 11, 2015, stabbed 27 times—this movement COMMITS to exhausting all avenues to achieve justice for Diana and for all our sisters murdered in different parts of Latin America. We have decided to shout, and to declare a State of Emergency for our movement. We do not want our deaths to be made invisible; we want to make this fury heard with our own voices, without any kind of oversight. We need to unleash the anger we've been accumulating. We continue to be the ones who put our bodies on the line, yet we lack the support enjoyed by other social and political movements. Our lives, our very existence, have always been penalized and criminalized. Despite legal recognition of our gender identity, the historical damage inflicted upon us remains unrepaired. We continue to be institutionally excluded. This government has been dismantling public policies related to access to healthcare, education, and employment, curtailing our right to choose who and how we want to be. thumb_img_0630_1024 We are the most vulnerable group in our civil society. Our bodies bear the scars of systematic institutional violence, which has been and continues to be sustained by capitalist, patriarchal, cis-hetero-sexist, binary, xenophobic, and racist systems. But united and organized, we also know our potential. We know violence, we know discrimination, and how it ends in death. Yet, despite everything, our bodies have resisted and survived since we decided to break free from cultural impositions. They are the ones who keep the memory alive; we have become political subjects, agents of change, fighting for freedom, for the emancipation of our bodies and of our people. We come from the terrible orphanhood of the irreparable losses of Lohana Berkins, also murdered by this system that denied her the right to live her life like everyone else, and of Diana Sacayán, whom we will avenge and whose deaths we will shout with fury every time we take to the streets to demand our rights. We will not stop until justice is served.  thumb_img_1274_1024 Transvestites and trans people are killed, and our deaths do not challenge the status quo, nor are they a reason to demand justice like others. For society and for the State, our death, like our life, is worthless; it is not a life worthy of being lived under equal conditions, like the life of any ordinary citizen. We need homes, work, healthcare, education, and reparations, and for that, of course… WE NEED TO BE ALIVE. We demand to stop being treated as easy targets, as if they were the "easy justification" for the police forces who, now with the backing of this right-wing government, the judiciary, the media, and religious establishment, are implementing hardline policies through discriminatory rhetoric and practices that criminalize us and fuel hatred toward our identities.  thumb_img_0685_1024 Our collective has submitted, for the first time, a report to the CEDAW Committee on the current human rights situation of trans and travesti people. In it, we denounce how, in the last 10 months, the persecution, harassment, fabrication of charges, and abuse against members of our community have intensified, and how this is exacerbated for our trans migrant sisters. We also highlight the lack of comprehensive public policies at the national, provincial, and local levels to reverse the exclusion to which the State confines us. CEDAW has just issued its recommendations, expressing concern about the reality we face and urging the Argentine State to address this problem.   During her recent visit to our country, UN Special Rapporteur Dubravka Simonovic , from our organizations, presented her with a report on the criminalization of trans and gender-diverse human rights defenders, who are suffering specific and targeted attacks, as well as the State's inaction in preventing and combating them. We need to eradicate judicial and institutional violence. STOP THE REPRESSION AND PERSECUTION!!!  thumb_img_1307_1024   We demand a review of the legal framework, timeframes, and accountability criteria, as they are not consistent with the specific ways in which these HATE CRIMES are perpetrated against our bodies. We want to dream of a future with new generations free from violence, with trans children who have institutions with loving parental responsibilities and commitments. We also remind you that we demand all of this so that our childhood is never stolen from us again… never again  thumb_img_1289_1024       .

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