Report: Record Number of Trans People Killed in US in 2017

By teleSUR

21 November 17

Over 102 transgender people have been killed in the United States over the past five years according to the Human Rights Campaign.

ome 25 transgender people have been killed so far in the United States this year, a number that breaks annual records, according to several advocacy groups in a report released days prior to Transgender Day of Remembrance.

A recent report sponsored by Trans People of Color Coalition and the Human Rights Campaign indicates that a total of 102 transgender people have been killed in the United States over the past five years, according to ABC Australia.

"Their killings were committed by lovers, acquaintances, family members, neighbors and strangers," the report outlined.

Both organizations contend that the annual tally of 25 homicides may very well be an incomplete total bearing in mind scant police records and local news reports that misidentify transgender victims by not respecting their chosen gender.

Of the 102 victims killed since Jan. 2013, the report detailed that 88 were transgender women. Nearly all of them were Black or Latino.

Transgender Day of Remembrance, celebrated on Nov. 20, is an international day to spotlight the number of murders of transgender people and to break the sequence of violence and persecution. Every three days, a transgender person is murdered somewhere in the world.

"While every story highlighted in this report is unique and tragic, they all also reflect a legacy of intolerance, hate and discrimination that transgender people must navigate and surmount every day," the document noted.

It went on to underscore that in many U.S. states "anti-transgender bias is ingrained and systematically enforced in nearly all aspects of life, including in laws and government agencies, schools, housing, healthcare and employment."

The report also emphasized that many transgender people living in poverty "rely on the underground economy to survive, including sex work, drug sales and other currently criminalized work." Such a precarious, dangerous scenario "may put transgender people at a higher risk of police harassment, sexual assault and fatal violence."