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By Paula Rosales, from San Salvador

Photo: José Cabezas 

Karla Avelar is a renowned LGBT rights defender in El Salvador who was forced to seek asylum in Switzerland, where she now resides, after enduring repeated persecution, threats, and torture. Her mother was kidnapped, and members of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), one of the largest and most violent gangs operating in the United States and three Central American countries, demanded she hand over part of the prize money from an international award for which she had been nominated. Avelar is a 41-year-old trans woman and survivor, while the average age of survival for transgender people in the region is 35. Her life has been marked by human rights violations: she has been repeatedly raped, kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and shot.

[READ ALSO: “Unstoppable”: the book that tells us about LGBTI rights in Latin America]

Upon seeking asylum in Europe, Avelar had to leave the leadership of the COMCAVIS TRANS organization.

El Salvador, a country of more than six million inhabitants, has a homicide rate of 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world, according to the United Nations.

The Salvadoran trans community reports that since 1993, approximately 600 women have been murdered, with not a single case resolved by the justice system. Many trans women in El Salvador are forced to smuggle drugs, weapons, and cell phones into prisons.

[READ ALSO: 2018: Guatemala on alert and in debt to LGBTI+ rights]

Faced with constant persecution, discrimination, lack of job opportunities, attacks and murders against the community, many of them have been forced to seek asylum in other countries.

Avelar has dedicated more than two decades to raising awareness of the social and economic conditions of the LGBT community. Her work was recognized in 2017 when she was nominated and became a finalist for the prestigious Martin Ennals Human Rights Award.

Presentes spoke with her about her career, the global challenges that the community will face in the face of the increase in ultra-conservative leaders who seek to suppress rights due to sexual diversity.

– What motivated you to seek asylum in Switzerland?

KA: It wasn't a pleasant motivation at all; it was primarily a necessity. For a long time, I was the victim of aggression, which even went so far as to harm my physical integrity, with attempts on my life. I was also kidnapped and, in a way, tortured, and obviously, no one should have to endure or allow that situation. However, along the way, I also had to endure my mother being involved, so in that sense, I was forced to endure as much as I could, even to the point of putting both our lives at risk. (The gang members) would send me messages saying that if they couldn't hurt me, they would hurt her. In a way, I could guarantee my safety, my movement by changing routes and all that, but my mother couldn't.

[READ ALSO: Inter-American Court of Human Rights: States in the region must guarantee gender identity and marriage equality]

I reported the public authorities for the situation of aggression, for arbitrary arrests, torture, extortion towards trans colleagues, so every time they found me there were aggressions towards me, they told me that I made them look bad and what evidence I had.

And the gangs went even further, when they realized that I was the director of an organization (COMCAVIS TRANS) they began to harass me in a more aggressive way.

During the last six months I lived in El Salvador, I had to find ways to get around because I was being attacked on the bus. Once, they came to my house in the middle of the night, threatened me, and demanded I hand over part of the Martin Ennals Award I was nominated for. They told me I had to understand that the gang needed to sustain itself and that if I guaranteed them part of the prize money, they would guarantee my safety and protection. When I refused, things spiraled out of control. I even had to request international support to be able to move immediately and change my address. I was assigned support to help me move, change my address and phone, and take security measures because I could no longer control the situation on my own.

– Did you feel that you were violated by both the State and organized crime, represented by the gangs?

KA: Yes, I suffered attacks from the police and the military.

– How did you make the decision to ask for protection?

KA: My mother and I traveled to the awards ceremony, and I didn't have any documents with me because I wasn't prepared for a decision I made at the last minute. I decided after learning about the video they showed my mother, and that's when I knew that if I returned to my country, I wouldn't survive more than a day. I didn't know how long they were going to torture me.

We participated in the awards ceremony, where I came in second place, and for me it was an important process of leadership recognition and also recognized the work of women human rights defenders, something that is not done in El Salvador.

While we were in Switzerland, my mother broke down and confessed that the arm she had fractured wasn't from a fall down the stairs, but from a gang attack. She lied to spare me further worry. The harassment escalated to the point where they demanded my mother tell them the date I would be returning to El Salvador from my trip to Switzerland.

They were going to be waiting for me at the airport the moment I set foot in my country. I would be murdered in front of my mother.

When I explained the situation to the award organizers, they met to assess the risk I faced in returning to El Salvador and urged me to make a decision. We left everything behind: my mother's house and the life we ​​had built together. She supported my decision; we cried all night in the hotel. It wasn't easy.

– After being forced to migrate, how would you define life for LGBT people in El Salvador, and what do you consider to be the reasons why a greater number seek other destination countries?

KA: As activists, we are aware of the violence in our countries. I would define it in one very strong word: what is happening now in El Salvador to the LGBTI population is genocide. Genocide because there is no response, no commitment, no guarantees for the protection of people's rights; all possibilities for advancement are limited through access to work, health, the right to free movement, and suffrage.

What we see is an opening for exploitation because we are useful to them when they deem us useful, but the reasons why these people decide to leave are numerous and obvious. The biggest problem is that the State does not recognize the forced displacement that is occurring both internally and externally.

[READ ALSO: #Guatemala The congresswoman who fights alone for LGBT rights]

The problem isn't solved simply by leaving the country; it's just the beginning. Leaving without information, without financial resources, and facing vulnerability as an LGBTQ+ person—especially if they are transgender—without family or social support, and arriving in a country like the United States, where the guarantee of rights has been changing lately, is incredibly difficult. It offers them no guarantees, particularly with President Donald Trump, who has denied them rights, funding, and protection, making the situation even more tragic.

– When did you make the decision to become an advocate for the human rights of LGBT people?

KA: There were plenty of reasons from childhood because discrimination against LGBTI people, and especially transgender people, begins within the family; this is due to a lack of information and simple ignorance that leads to rejection.

I am currently respected and accepted by my family, but at some point, my own family rejected me and hurt me from a very young age. I had to leave home, motivated not only by rejection but also by physical and sexual abuse. I was raped by my cousins. My mother's job in the capital forced her to leave me in the care of my grandmother, who lacked the necessary information to understand me.

When I left home at nine, I ended up in the hospital twice; sex work exposed me to difficult situations. I was imprisoned in a penitentiary where I was locked up to serve my sentence with the gang that had tried to kill me.

It was one of the most difficult parts of my life, those four and a half years in jail. There was never a conviction; there was a deficiency in the judicial system. I was imprisoned illegally and unjustly.

[READ ALSO: #Guatemala Alert over a law against the rights of women and LGBTI people]

I was arrested by a police officer who made my life a living hell when I was working as a sex worker. He falsified the information and testimonies in the case file that led to my imprisonment. I was also a victim of the justice system. I reached a very difficult point; when they imprisoned me, they beat me with sticks, raped me for two days with the consent of the prison guards, and almost inserted a stick into my anus. Fortunately, Borroneo Henríquez, the gang leader, arrived and told them to let me go, that my worst punishment would be enduring them. They let me live, but it was a life without life.

I became a sex object where every day I was their servant, I ironed their clothes, washed their shoes, cooked for them; it was a terrible physical strain and my HIV condition completely deteriorated my health.

Fortunately, I was released thanks to my mother's efforts; she had to pay a bribe to the judge, who only released me when he was given money, and I was in very bad health afterward.

After all, that started a more critical situation because the gang accused me of infecting “Homboys” with HIV. Obviously, to protect my life, I didn't tell them my status because they would have killed me on the spot. That's when I learned about the situation trans women face, and I decided I had to report it. It wasn't an easy decision, but I dared to speak out and filed my first complaint in 2013 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) about the conditions we were living in. That report also addressed the situation of women deprived of their liberty.

– Do you know how many of the cases you reported have been resolved in El Salvador?

KA: The IACHR only makes recommendations to States, but this complaint resulted in four major recommendations. One was the approval of a gender identity law for transgender people; another was that government institutions begin documenting hate crimes; and it also urged the reformulation of the penal code to include hate crime as an aggravating circumstance. Of these, only the hate crimes law was implemented.

This reform has left a bad taste because it was approved in 2015, has been in effect for three years, and has barely been implemented in one or two cases. There, it is very easy to identify the lack of commitment and the lack of empathy in the enforcement of the laws by the prosecution, because judges do not apply the articles in cases of aggression against LGBTI people.

AP: What do you think about the rise of ultraconservative governments on the continent?

KA: I think it highlights the regression that states have experienced in respecting human rights, not only towards LGBTI people, but also other groups are being violated such as indigenous peoples, women, and displaced persons.

In the international context, we see Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as countries undergoing complicated processes, whether due to ultraconservative governments or those who have seized power. All of this puts the lives of not only LGBTQ+ people at risk, but also their families and the social fabric of the country. But I believe there is an important factor at play: the immense power of churches, which is reflected in the election of these kinds of leaders who then bring the demands of religious groups into power. This is serious.

The important message is that organizations must better prepare themselves to face these setbacks in rights that had already been won in Brazil, the United States, and Argentina. This deserves real attention and monitoring from international mechanisms and social organizations to prevent these states from being governed by the crazy thinking of one person.

Regarding El Salvador, the situation is not at all favorable; a process of regression has begun since the election of the new Legislative Assembly, and now a right-leaning prosecutor has been elected, and there is also the possibility that a far-right representative will become president. This will further complicate the conditions not only for LGBTI people, but also for women.

I highly doubt the identity law will move forward, but I see the outlook as very bleak. There won't be the slightest chance of the gender law advancing. On the contrary, if the right wing comes to power, the same thing will happen as in Brazil: hard-won benefits will be blocked, the Directorate of Sexual Diversity will disappear, and even the Secretariat of Social Inclusion could vanish.

In El Salvador, the Catholic and Evangelical churches have a great influence on the management of public policies.

We are currently living in a silent war, with more than three thousand murders a year, with extrajudicial executions, and it is very clear that it is killing legally, and in this case the State is complicit in the excessive violence.

AP: El Salvador is about to elect a new president, and no candidate has addressed the inclusion of LGBT rights in their government plans. What is your assessment of this?

KA: It's a denial and a lack of recognition of the need to work with vulnerable populations. I only know of one government plan, and it doesn't convince me. An important point is to meet and listen to the different sectors.

I believe the LGBTI movement must demand much more and strengthen its demands based on our own reality.

-How do you contribute from the outside to demanding respect for the rights of LGBT people?

KA: Now I have the opportunity to have a more proactive impact on the United Nations mechanism. I participate in consultations, conferences, and document reviews. I also participated in the annual meeting on forced displacement alongside the UN Special Rapporteur on Refugees and Displacement. I continue to expose reports of human rights violations against the LGBTI community in Central America.