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CompanyVenezuelan transgender people want to be able to change their first name
Transgender activists were chained to public benches on Tuesday in front of the Venezuelan Rights Defender building in Caracas to demand respect for acquired rights.
Members of the LGBT+ community, including one in a wheelchair, remain chained to a bench protesting the lack of attention to their gender demands outside the Defender of Rights building in Caracas, November 22, 2022.
AFP
“Venezuela is not Qatar”, could be read on one of the banners of these activists linked since Monday by a chain closed by a padlock, in reference to the criminalization of homosexuality in the host country of the World Cup 2022.
If the Venezuelan law allows the change of first name, transgender people face obstacles to do so, explains Paul Martucci of the NGO Transcending Borders. “When you come to a job interview with your gender image and expression, you are told that you cannot be given the job because your ID card has another first name, which does not does not correspond to the person who applies”, he illustrates.
Along with other LGBT+ activists, Paul Martucci has been participating since Monday in the indefinite demonstration which also intends to demand the possibility of marriage and the decriminalization of homosexuality in the army. The latter also evokes police violence: “When the police ask you for your identity card and see that it does not correspond to your sex, they tell you that you have an identity card which is not yours, then comes “matraqueo” (corruption), extortion and psycho-terrorism.”
“Victims of omission”
“The most vulnerable population is the trans population,” said Koddy Campos, another activist. “She doesn’t have access to education, there are trans people who are taken out of schools, universities, they don’t have jobs”. He also assures that for fear of discrimination, many choose not to go to health centers. “More than ten years ago, we introduced the Marriage for All Bill in the National Assembly.
We are victims of omission: not wanting to talk about the issue is also discrimination,” he said, pointing out that the community failed to have an article of the military code repealed, which provides for one to three years. prison for “acts against nature” committed by members of the Venezuelan armed forces. “We are far behind all the changes that have taken place in the Americas,” laments Koddy Campos.
(AFP)