Information from Colombia Diversa also shows that at least 57 people had been killed in 2008. Until September 2009 at least 30 murders had been reported. The Colombian state authorities, who are responsible for ensuring that the justice system is being implemented, have failed to explain the assassinations and human rights violations against the country’s LGBT people.
In Colombia, these crimes are often committed with impunity and this in itself shows that the general public is in favour of a system that gives privilege to the heterosexual paradigm and maintains the status quo. In this context, violence, for example in the family, at educational institutions and at work serves as a mechanism that ensures LGBT people are discriminated against and excluded.
Generally, crimes against this population are considered by Colombian institutions as “crimes of passion”. This means the perpetrator’s responsibility is explained by his or her emotions, instead of looking at the social and political context in which the crime occurred.
This contributes to the attitude that these types of crimes are something natural and legitimate. In addition, absence data and analytical categories contribute to the failure of clearing up these types of crimes, as well as the failure to prevent their repetition.
The Observatory of Sexual and Gender-Oriented Violence was created in 2009 by the Cali-based organization Lesbiapolis, with the purpose of trying to address these issues and shortcomings. The main objective is to help create new public policies, programs and projects. It also seeks to contribute to the prevention and reduction of violence against this population. Additionally, it wants to help develop a transformation within the social and political institutions. Lastly, and not least, the Observatory aims to promote justice.
Through its documentation work and research, Lesbiapolis - a youth organization that specifically works with LGBT issues - understands discrimination and exclusion as important factors that affect the relevant population.
Lesbiapolis claims that to explain the violence towards the LGBT community, it is necessary to use different approaches - including economic, sociological and political - to study family, individual, social, cultural and institutional scenarios.
Lesbiapolis has, however, added a cross-transversal category of prejudice and violence because it considers them to be relevant factors in determining and monitoring discrimination and exclusion. It has also created three different research categories: violence by prejudice, heteronormativity and institutional change.
By heteronormativity, Lesbiapolis means the socially acceptable system of sexual domination and erotic expression that privileges heterosexuality. This system also includes a system of knowledge production that defines normal and abnormal attributes and behavior.
This gives scientists a justification for placing homosexual individuals in subordinated categories and it also contributes to the normalization of violence that is committed against this population, whether direct acts or structural, such as the failure to create adequate public policies.
In order to divert from this heteronormativity, Lesbiapolis calls for studies to take an institutional-change approach, which examines politics, rules and structures that enable or restrict the population to access their fundamental rights in the context of sexual and gender diversity. For example, the Observatory has proposed that the different types of violence and prejudices in the Colombian society against the sexually and gender diverse population should be registered as a separate category in the Department of Valle del Cauca.
During 2009 the Observatory recorded 115 cases of gender prejudice, which span from physical and verbal violence, to structural violence and assassinations. Moreover, the Observatory has been involved in the following activities:
creating new sexual and gender diversity public policy guidelines in Cali;
elaborating the National Police’s 006 permanent policy, which seeks special treatment and to change police practices towards the LGBT population;
counselling research projects of university students in the region;
providing legal support to victims of violence based on prejudice;
monitoring the applicability of the constitutional framework.
In its continuing activities, the Observatory will continue to promote democracy, urge political institutions to change their practices, create more detailed information, monitor the production of knowledge and promote justice as a crucial element for the exercise of citizenship.
For more information about Lesbiapolis, please contact Lina Camacho: lesbiapolis@gmail.com.
Also visit their blog
RSS 2.0