Underreporting of crimes against LGBTQI+ in Brazil is human rights concern

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The more than 20% increase in violent crimes against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transvestites and intersex people (LGBQTI+) in 2020, released last week in the Brazilian Public Safety Yearbook, is only a fraction of the violence against this population, alert human rights activists and minority rights advocates who point to the high underreporting of cases and data availability challenges.

According to the Brazilian Public Safety Forum’s survey, Brazil recorded a 20.9% increase in intentional bodily injury, a 20.5% increase in rapes, and a 24.7% rise in intentional homicides of LGBTQI+ people in 2020. The researchers responsible for the study consider that “the low quality of data does not enable a precise conclusion as to whether the increase is in fact an increase in the number of cases or an increase in the capacity and efforts to identify and report them.”

The lack of available data to map violence against LGBTQI+ people was an issue researchers found in all regions of Brazil. In terms of felony homicides, for instance, the research was unable to obtain information from Ceará, Maranhão, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Roraima, and São Paulo.

“If the crimes of racial insult and racism are difficult to register, those of homicide where the victim is no longer able to actively narrate what happened to him or her are even more scarce,” the yearbook notes.

The need to improve data availability was recently highlighted in a study released by Grupo Arco-Íris, which made a number of recommendations to public agencies in Rio de Janeiro and alerted that “there is currently no way to know clearly, objectively, directly and transparently how many incident records are made in each police station in the state of Rio de Janeiro about violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

One of civil society’s efforts to overcome this issue is the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals (ANTRA) annual report released in January, which showed a 29% increase in the number of murders of transsexuals in Brazil in 2020.

The association’s president Keila Simpson believes that the work of recording crimes has impacted and encouraged a greater effort on the part of the states to enhance the available data. Still, she perceives the increase in occurrences in 2020 as a worsening of violence against the trans population, even amid the Covid-19 pandemic and social isolation.

“We have noted that the upsurge in violence occurs at times when hate speech is more inflamed, and we don’t expect this to decrease in the short term,” she laments.

Both the president of ANTRA and the Public Safety Yearbook highlight the level of cruelty of these crimes. The research shows that there is an “annihilating disposition” in these criminals and cites the case of Roberta da Silva, a transsexual woman who was set on fire by an adolescent in Recife on June 24 this year and died on July 9. Keila Simpson also recalls the case of Dandara, in Ceará, who was stoned and beaten before being shot to death, a crime filmed by the perpetrators themselves.

“There is an expression of hate in these crimes. Someone who kills a trans person doesn’t only shoot a vital part. They shoot five, eight, ten times,” denounces ANTRA’s president. “We emphasize that it is not only the murder itself, but the cruelty that makes us more scared and alert to this violence.”

An attorney involved in the lawsuits that led the STF to criminalize LGBTQI-phobia, Paulo Iotti believes that there is a lack of training and awareness for the justice and public security systems to correctly record and process the occurrences of these crimes. President of the Attorneys Group for Sexual and Gender Diversity, he said that the STF decision was a milestone but that the changes since then have come at a very slow pace.

“We have progressed in slow steps, at a slow pace. But we need to advance much more,” he emphasizes.

Iotti said that victims have been more willing to go to police stations to report crimes yet they need to be better received, which he believes could be addressed with public policies aimed at guiding public safety professionals and raising awareness in society in general.

“There is a serious underreporting problem and this is true for all crimes against minorities,” the attorney said, explaining that victims of hate crimes can be discouraged from reporting and potentially become victims of further discrimination when faced with police officers unprepared to deal with diversity.

A study released this year by NGO All Out in partnership with the Matizes Institute corroborated the activists’ considerations by pointing out 34 obstacles that hinder the effective criminalization of LGBTQI-phobia in Brazil.

Among the obstacles are: the lack of political will to promote LGBTI+ rights; inequality in the access of women and LGBTQI+ people to the courts and public safety systems; relativization of hate speech; failure to include data on sexual orientation and gender identity in police reports; and an insufficient number of specialized police stations.