Share

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook Tweet Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

By Milena Pafundi, from Mexico City 

The Mexico City Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) issued a landmark recommendation for the Attorney General's Office to address the transfemicide of Paola Buenrostro with a gender perspective, provide reparations to survivor Kenya Cytlaly, and establish a future investigation process specifically focused on hate crimes against the LGBT+ community.

Paola and Kenya were sex workers and were attacked on September 30, 2016, by a client in a car. Kenya survived being shot. Paola, 24, from Chiapas, died that night. The client was arrested at the time but released 48 hours later due to lack of evidence.

In presenting Recommendation 02/2019, Nashieli Ramírez, president of the CDHDF, stated: “Being trans and a sex worker determined the quality of access to justice provided by the public institutions in charge of investigating, judging and punishing a homicide that, like many others, should have been classified as a hate crime.”

During the initial proceedings and throughout the process, both Paola, now deceased, and Kenia were discriminated against and denied their right to identity. They were repeatedly referred to by a different name, despite Kenya's insistence on being called by the correct name.

[READ ALSO: 3 trans women murdered in one month in Mexico City]

Today, Kenya is an activist and founder of Casa de las Muñecas Tiresias AC . At the Commission's conference, she said: “I'm truly over it, but right now I feel very nostalgic and sensitive. It's been like reliving everything, going through the same emotional situation again. But I always have the desire to fight and to see a better Mexico, where my communities, especially trans people, can have inclusion and human rights.”

"The concept of transfemicide must prevail."

At the press conference, they also denounced the Attorney General's Office for its lack of progress and its continued bias when faced with an LGBTTTI+ victim, especially in the case of trans women. "They distort the investigation if, instead of stating that the victim is a trans woman, they say it's a man," said Alejandro Britto Lemus, director of Letraese. He added, "This recommendation is historic for many reasons: it's the first one issued regarding a transfemicide, and it must be clear that this is the legal classification that should prevail when a victim of lethal violence is a woman or a trans person, with a non-normative gender identity or expression."

Nashieli Ramírez asserted that there is still much to be done: “We cannot delay in having exemplary sentences like the one handed down a year ago by the court of the judicial branch of Argentina on the occasion of the transvesticide of Diana Sacayán: life imprisonment for the homicide qualified by hatred of gender identity and by having had gender violence involved.”

[READ ALSO: LGBT-hate attack in a Mexico City bar: several victims with cuts and bruises]

The president of the CDHDF explained that the socioeconomic situation of transgender people is trapped in a cycle of exclusion and poverty that makes them more vulnerable to violence, to working in the informal economy, and to sex work as a means of survival. She mentioned the close relationship between homelessness, sex work for survival, and the violence, discrimination, and violence faced by LGBTQI+ people.

Six points

Recommendation 02/2019 to the Attorney General's Office of Mexico City consists of 6 points:

1- Generate and execute a comprehensive individual reparation plan for Kenia Cuevas, which includes the concepts of material damage, immaterial damage, life project and the corresponding rehabilitation measures.

2- The Attorney General's Office of Mexico City must issue a public apology and acknowledgment of responsibility

3- The Attorney General's Office will publish on its website the text of recommendation 02/2019 accompanied by the express commitment of that institution to guarantee the non-repetition of the events.

4- Design specific procedures to ensure the incorporation of context analysis, as well as risk analysis of victims, witnesses or complainants in investigations of crimes involving priority groups.

5- The Prosecutor's Office will prepare a proposal to modify the legal framework for expert intervention in order to ensure that expert practice is timely, of high quality, and based on scientific and technical practice for the clarification of the facts and the preservation of evidence.

6- The Attorney General's Office will redesign the protocol for action for people of sexual and gender diversity, at least considering specific criteria for the investigation of the crime of homicide committed against LGBTTTQI+ people.