#Buenos Aires: Another attack on a trans woman in Once

January 8, 2017

This is the third attack in less than a month. Early Saturday morning, a group of men savagely beat 21-year-old Kymberly. Calls are being made for the government to take urgent action to eradicate violence against transgender and transvestite people. (#BuenosAires) — Kimberly is 21 years old, Ecuadorian, and works as a sex worker. Early Saturday morning, around 2 a.m., three men attacked her with sticks, metal bars, and stones: they broke her nose and cut her arms, while insulting her and threatening to kill her. It happened at the corner of Moreno and Catamarca streets, in the Once neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The young woman managed to run away and escape. Days earlier, she had been beaten while with three other transgender women near Plaza Misere. “A group of transphobic, xenophobic, and deeply violent men appear every night on the streets of Once to assault our female colleagues if they don't pay them for their stop. In other words, we are facing a crime known as sexual exploitation,” the report states. release which Otrans made public yesterday, in response to this attack. “Our colleagues who are sex workers in Once have been reporting these kinds of practices,” Claudia Vásquez Haro, from the organization Otrans Argentina, told Presentes. At the end of December, in that same area, A young woman disappeared after being stabbed twice this year. Her colleagues found her after a search that lasted several days, asking for food at a bakery. Because of these cases, on December 30th, a complaint was filed with the National Criminal Court of Instruction No. 9 requesting that security measures be guaranteed, including surveillance cameras and police officers to monitor these groups. According to the Otrans statement, the response was: “We cannot request police presence in areas where prostitution is practiced because it is a crime.” “Our commitment is to continue demanding that the State take responsibility for the institutional violence experienced by our colleagues in prostitution and implement public policies that include our community to eradicate once and for all the violence and vulnerability to which they are exposed,” stated the Otrans press release. On this point, Vásquez Haro indicated that they requested the National Council of Women (CNM) to allocate funds from its 47 million soles budget “to carry out direct actions and form an interdisciplinary team to eradicate this type of violence suffered by our colleagues in the trans community,” she noted. Follow Presentes: Twitter @PresentesTLGBI Instagram: PresentesTLGBI Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/presentesTLGBI]]>

We are Present

We are committed to a type of journalism that delves deeply into the realm of the world and offers in-depth research, combined with new technologies and narrative formats. We want the protagonists, their stories, and their struggles to be present.