Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance
This is today, Transgender Day of Remembrance, and around the country both in Canada and the U.S. memorials and vigils are being held to mark the many victims of anti-trans violence. The organizers write: "The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.
The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999.
Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved. Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people.
The Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project recently released its latest figures, which show that there was the horrific number of 238 reported killings of trans people in the past year, with Brazil and Mexico registering the highest number of murders.
In the past 70 months: - 1,074 killings of trans people have been 'reported' in Central and South America which account for 78 % of the globally reported murders of trans people since January 2008. In this region, there has been the strongest increase in reports and with 22 countries Central and South America is the best documented region. -
117 killings of trans people have been reported in Asia in 16 countries; -
87 killings of trans people have been reported in North America -
84 killings of trans people have been reported in Europe in 12 countries -
8 killings of trans people have been reported in Africa in 4 countries -
4 killings of trans people have been reported in Oceania (Australia and proximate islands) in 4 countries
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