Dana Valiente, president of an NGO working for the implementation of a trans employment quota, reported that a group of young men forced their way into her home in Garupá and vandalized it while threatening to kill her. Following her report of the attack, the 6th Investigating Court is conducting the investigation. Yesterday, Sunday, around midday, Dana Abigail Valiente—an activist with the organization "From the Street to Dignity"—was at her home in Garupá (Misiones) when a group of men entered the house and vandalized it, shouting: "We're going to kill you. And we're going to come back to your house tonight because you're a fucking faggot." Minutes later, Dana filed a report at the 5th Police Station in Garupá. The case is now being handled by Judge Ricardo Balor of the 6th Investigating Court in Posadas. "I hope for justice. That they find those who did this." “And I also hope the State takes responsibility for the material damages. I received solidarity from friends of diversity, but so far, from the institutional actors, no one has shown their face or come,” Dana told Presentes. “From the Street to Dignity,” the NGO she heads, seeks the labor market integration of transgender and transsexual people, particularly women in prostitution.

"We're going back to your house"

Yesterday, Dana was upstairs in her home in Garupá (a town of 40,000 inhabitants, 16 kilometers from Posadas, the provincial capital) when at 1:30 p.m. she began to hear stones being thrown at the window. Then she heard them breaking down the door and entering her house in the Ñu Porá neighborhood. According to the police report, it was "a group of young men, four or five of them, who broke into my house by forcing open the iron gate and fence." The men acted with their faces uncovered, destroying everything in their path while shouting, "We're going to kill you. And we're going to come back to your house tonight because you're a fucking faggot." Dana saw them, but she also saw that they were carrying knives. The young men threatened to attack her. While trying to defend herself, she stayed upstairs when the police siren sounded—Dana believes her neighbors called the police because the noise was loud. The men fled before the officers arrived. At 2:30 p.m., Dana went to the police station to file a report. "The forensics team didn't arrive at her house until 7:00 p.m. At 9:00 p.m., they sent her police protection, and she stayed until 7:00 a.m. this morning, when she left," representatives from Colectivo 108, the organization that publicized the case, told Presentes.

[READ MORE: Violent attack by a gang on three LGBTI activists]

“We condemn this violent and transphobic attack. We at Colectivo 108 believe it was not accidental but deliberate. Dana is an activist and recently participated in the Provincial Women's Parliament. There, she presented a bill seeking to implement a trans employment quota so that the State allocates a percentage of its staff to trans, transvestite, and transgender people,” Yanina López, one of the spokespeople for Colectivo 108, told Presentes. “We condemn all types of aggression, but particularly those motivated by hatred toward people with sexual orientations and gender identities that deviate from the heterosexual and cisgender norm,” the Colectivo stated in a press release. Photos: Courtesy of Colectivo 108 ]]>