A 27-year-old trans woman was murdered in San Salvador.

Anahy Miranda Rivas was brutally murdered this Sunday with a knife.

October 28, 2019

By Paula Rosales, from San Salvador

Anahy Miranda Rivas, 27 years old, was murdered in the early hours of Sunday, October 27, on a busy avenue in San Salvador. According to witnesses interviewed by Presentes, the victim suffered multiple stab wounds to the head, throat, and other parts of her body, as well as a ruptured trachea.

Anahy made a living through sex work on Los Héroes Boulevard in the nation's capital. That morning, she got into a car with a supposed client, where she was allegedly attacked. Her body was dumped and abandoned on the same street. “Some men arrived and forced her into the car. Witnesses say they heard screams and saw the same vehicle return to dump her body in the street. El Salvador is a country that hates the LGBTI population, a country that perpetrates violence,” human rights defender Odaly's Araujo told Presentes.

“The homicide was reported at 4:05 a.m. today on Los Héroes Boulevard. The victim suffered stab wounds to the head,” a source from the National Civil Police told Presentes.

The study “Prejudice Knows No Borders,” presented by the LGBTI Violence-Free Observatory—comprised of organizations from nine countries (Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Peru, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Bolivia)—indicates that 80 percent of the bodies of murder victims were found in public spaces and private residences. It also identified that Saturdays and Sundays are the days when the most crimes were committed. The results refer to hate crimes in those countries between January 2014 and June 2019.

So far in 2019, five transgender women have been murdered in El Salvador . The Central American nation recorded a homicide rate of 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, one of the highest in the world.

According to the Solidarity Association to Promote Human Development (ASPIDH Arcoiris Trans), since 1993 to date they have registered the murder of some 600 women, very few cases have been investigated and prosecuted.

"We demand that the State protect our rights."

“This new hate crime in El Salvador has been unexpected news, as have others that have been committed in the past. We repudiate and condemn this crime, and we demand that the State protect our rights, our safety, and the inclusion of trans people in the workforce because we are being murdered and neither this government nor previous ones have done anything to protect us,” Odaly's stated.

In 2015, the Salvadoran Congress amended the penal code so that crimes committed due to discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation are condemned based on the criterion that they were committed out of hate and can be punished with a sentence of 30 to 60 years in prison.

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