Founder and Govt Director of the Caribbean Equality Mission, Mohamed Q. Amin, on Thursday, Sept. 5 informed Caribbean Life that the Queer Caribbean Liberation Collective, the one LGBTQ+ contingent within the 2024 West Indian Day Parade, marched to demand motion, accountability, and justice in response to a string of murders of transgender Guyanese ladies within the Caribbean area.
He mentioned the march reminds Caribbean patrons of the mindless homophobic and transphobic violence in Guyana and the Caribbean area. The 150+ neighborhood members, coalition companions, and activists marched to amplify Caribbean LGBTQ+ illustration in entrance of hundreds of spectators and hundreds of thousands of on-line viewers, celebrating Caribbean cultural heritage. The Carnival Street has at all times been a spot of resistance, centering a historical past of preventing for freedom and celebrating Caribbean resilience. Carrying highly effective demand posters with messages calling for a repeal of Guyana’s archaic post-colonial legal guidelines that proceed to hurt LGBTQ+ folks, the contingent elevated visibility and inclusivity for LGBTQ+ folks at considered one of North America’s largest Caribbean cultural celebrations.
Wearing bejeweled carnival costumes, Tiffany Jade Munroe, the Trans Justice Coordinator of Caribbean Equality Mission, and Trans activist Twinkle A. Paul led the Queer Caribbean.
“I left Guyana after my mother and father deserted me and skilled homelessness. Guyana inherited archaic colonial legal guidelines, non secular bigotry, police brutality, and oppressive practices from its colonial rulers. The nation’s anti-LGBTQ legal guidelines are deeply rooted in a historical past of slavery and indentureship. They breathe selective non secular morality, domesticate energy, and management practices, resulting in an absence of human rights safety. As we speak, homophobia, transphobia, exclusion, and violence in opposition to LGBTQ+ people are legitimized with no accountability, which disproportionately impacts transgender folks,” mentioned Tiffany Jade Munroe.
Paul, a graduate of John Jay Faculty of Legal Justice, mentioned, “What number of extra transgender folks should run away, be systematically ignored, be maligned, die, and be overwhelmed.“
“The federal government of Guyana and the opposition are all complicit, and their silence and in-actions uphold injustices, normalizing violence, and invalidating LGBTQ+ lives. It’s unequivocally the duty of the Guyanese authorities to abolish colonial inherited legal guidelines that proceed to assert LGBTQ+ futures,” mentioned Paul.
Paul added that an epidemic of transphobia has claimed the lives of six transgender ladies in horrific acts of hate and violence over 12 years in Guyana, most not too long ago as two ladies because the begin of the summer season. Up to now, there was no motion or funding in any investigation by Guyana’s Individuals’s Progressive Social gathering/Civic (PPP/C).
The present occasion in energy and spiritual leaders have mentioned the assertion but to sentence these mindless and brutal killings of those Guyanese residents.
“On the 57th annual West Indian Day Parade, after seeing the golden arrow flying excessive by marchers of the Queer Caribbean Liberation Collective, Susan Rodrigues, a minister throughout the Ministry of Housing and Water in Guyana, and Oneidge Walrond, the minister of Tourism, Trade, and Commerce, two outstanding Guyanese politicians appointed by President Irfaan Ali, stopped to take an image with the group,” mentioned the reveler.
“Nonetheless, after studying the messages on the Guyanese LGBTQ+ diasporic neighborhood demand posters, the 2 ministers escape was intercepted by Mohamed Q. Amin, who hand-delivered a press launch detailing the group’s constitutional amendments to the federal government of Guyana as a name to motion to guard LGBTQ+ folks, police accountability, and Justice for Guyanese Trans Lives,” mentioned Paul.
“We’re calling on the Guyana authorities to guard trans folks. Six trans folks in Guyana have been killed within the final 12 years. We count on our president, ministers, and particularly our LGBTQ Guyanese folks in positions of energy like your self, who come to the diaspora to guard all of us so we are able to come again house. Our contingent is manufactured from 90% Guyanese asylum seekers who left their nation as a result of they weren’t protected,” mentioned the protesters.
Most not too long ago, on Saturday, Aug. 3, mentioned the group, a transgender girl recognized to her neighborhood as Radica was murdered on the Mahaica Neighborhood Heart. Radica’s deserted physique was found in a pool of blood with a number of stab wounds. Her demise comes simply lower than a month after a gunman fatally shot and killed Shawn Simon, a younger and vibrant Afro-Guyanese transgender girl, on July 11, 2024. Radica and Simon will not be the primary instances of homicide.
In 2013, Wesly Holder was tortured, and her lifeless physique was dumped in a darkish alley. Up to now, nobody has been held accountable, and her demise stays a thriller. In 2014, Jason John, also called Jada, and Carlyle Sinclair, known as Tyra, have been murdered with the help of employees who have been workers of Mekdeci Equipment & Building Inc. (MMC), a privately owned safety firm. In 2015, once more one other trans sibling, Noel Nephi, was brutally gunned down, execution model, like Simon.
“The murders of Radica and Simon despatched shockwaves all through Guyana’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood, a reminder of the every day struggles for the security and stability of trans folks whereas illuminating the antiquated post-colonial legal guidelines that proceed to show their fellow residents that hurt in opposition to LGBTQ+ Guyanese folks is appropriate and never value investigating. Their deaths didn’t happen in isolation. It’s a results of an absence of human rights legal guidelines and many years of systemic injustices focusing on marginalized LGBTQ+ folks within the nation. Guyana is the one nation in South America the place same-sex intimacy is illegitimate. The regulation criminalizes ‘gross indecency’ and ‘buggery’ between consenting adults, with penalties of as much as life imprisonment. There aren’t any authorized protections in opposition to discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation or gender identification,” mentioned Amin.
All of the murdered trans ladies have been pressured into survival intercourse work attributable to an absence of employment alternatives, job discrimination, housing inequities, and inaccessible well being and gender-affirming care, mentioned the group.
To be taught extra, go to www.caribbeanequalityproject.org
