Another member of the LGBTIQ+ community murdered in Barranquilla

A new crime against a member of the LGBTIQ+ community in the Atlantic has this population appalled, who views with concern as crimes against them increased last year.

According to the NGO Caribe Affirmativo, the homicide was perpetrated on Tuesday, March 29 at dawn in Barranquilla and the victim was Javier Armando Murillo Martínez, a 26-year-old gay man, who was killed by gunfire when he was dealing with some close friends on 98th Street with a career 8th, in the Las Malvinas neighborhood.

“An individual who was on a motorcycle came up and shot him repeatedly. He was immediately transferred to the San Ignacio Clinic in Barranquilla, where he later died,” they reported on the organization's website.

With this new act of violence against the diverse population, alarms are again raised, since according to Caribe Affirmativo, homicides of people from the LGBTIQ+ community increased to 38 murders or femicides of that group in that area, which represents an increase of 78 per cent compared to these same crimes committed in 2020.

“Compared to previous years, there has been a constant increase in cases of violence since 2017,” is extracted from the report of the Human Rights Observatory of this NGO on the situation of rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people in the Colombian Caribbean.

This NGO blames this increase in violence against the LGBTIQ+ collective on “the setbacks and the breaking of commitments by the current government to the Peace Agreement” and the “entry and reaccommodation of illegal armed actors with their 'corrective' action against what is categorized as' deviant '”, among others.

In addition, according to the report, hate speech by the ruling class that “makes prejudice and violence invisible, recriminating and justifying prejudice and violence” has also increased, as murders increased by 300 percent compared to the 12 recorded in 2017, when the implementation of the peace agreement with the FARC began.

This region, which encompasses nine departments (including the San Andrés archipelago), is experiencing “a remembrance of the cruelest era in Colombian history: threats, murders, massacres and displacements,” according to Caribe Affirmativo.

The department of Magdalena, whose capital is the city of Santa Marta, was the one that reported the most, with a notable increase compared to previous years, while Atlántico and its capital, Barranquilla, experienced a decline in homicides and femicides last year compared to previous ones.

On the other hand, the majority of victims were trans people with 9 homicides, followed by gay men of whom there were 8 cases and most of the murders were committed with bladed weapons, “which may represent premeditation, forcefulness, brutality and torture.”

These are cases like that of Christina Cantillo, a trans leader from Santa Marta who worked for women's rights and sex workers and had reported abuses by authorities. She had her security scheme revoked, despite having warned that her life was in danger, and was murdered last December 8 at the door of her house.

The report also includes 28 threats (8 individual and 20 collective), mainly through pamphlets; 2 attempted homicide and 5 injuries, as well as 4 cases of domestic violence and at least 192 reports of sexual violence against LGBTIQ+ people.

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