COMMUNIQUE BY ORGANISATIONS OF SPANISH TRANSSEXUALS AND INDIVIDUAL ACTIVISTS ON THE SITUATION OF TRANSVESTITES IN ARGENTINA

Traducido por
Translated by Jane Brook


We, the under-signed organisations of Spanish transsexuals and individual activists express our continuing concern at the situation of transvestites in Argentina who have in the last month suffered two killings, one more attack leaving the victim in a coma and numerous other attacks.

In one particular case, there exist doubts as to the attitude of members of the police force, against whom the victim had lodged a complaint, doubts which could only be relieved by the arrest of the person responsible for the crime, a person who remains at large.

Give this extraordinary sequence of attacks and extortions, questions must be raised as to the existence of an anti-democratic sub-culture which nurtures and supports these incidents, as well as to the necessity of not making any concessions to this sub-culture.

We believe there is an urgent need for a reaction against these incidents by the Argentine people, conscious of the democratic record of their country and who have themselves been victims of terrible oppression. Such a reaction is starting to become apparent in the form of articles, some of them outstanding, in the press.

This is the only way in which those responsible will be brought to justice and that society as a whole will learn and understand the cruelty of the acts these people have carried out against an especially marginalised minority.

The killings of transvestites and attacks against them have become a test of the first order of the ability of democratically-minded people to punish those others who appear incapable of understanding what it means to respect the democratic and human rights of their fellow-citizens.

In particular, we deplore that transvestites who are minors are marginalised and become victims of criminals without the social concern normally shown for other minors being extended to them.

They are, nonetheless, minors who are especially vulnerable and preyed upon, who have the right to become accepted within society, to receive an education and to develop and live their lives in full respect of their sexuality.

We hope that international organisations will defend the situation of transvestites in Argentina and that democratic society in that country will lend vigorous support to defending the rights of these, its most marginalised fellow-citizens.