They call for sittings to reject murders of people from the LGBTIQ community

This Thursday, April 7, the LGBTIQ community throughout the country will mobilize in different cities to reject the recent murders in Medellin, and in general, violence against this population.

Different groups have called for sittings in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Ibagué; symbolic and cultural activities will be held in these spaces, as well as special recognition of the six people from the LGBTIQ community who have murdered in Medellín in the first three months of 2022.

Bogotá: The call is for attendees to arrive at 6:00 p.m. at the Park Way, in the La Soledad neighborhood. There they will hold a wake in rejection of acts of violence against the community.

Medellin: attendees were called at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 7 at the administrative center La Alpujarra, located at 44 # 52 street. In this place, there will be a reading of the requests of the LGBTIQ community to the city authorities, a minute of silence for the recently murdered people, a velathon and artistic interventions.

On the other hand, the organization Caribe Affirmativo also called a sit-in in front of the Attorney General's Office, Medellin section, for Friday, April 8, at 5:30 p.m.

Cali: The call by organizations at 6:00pm, in La Gruta, in front of Bellas Artes.

Ibagué: In this city, the sit-in will take place from 6:00 in the afternoon of this Thursday, in Plaza Manuel Murillo Toro.

So far in 2022, five people from the community have been killed in Medellin. Three of the crimes were committed in March and the LGBTIQ+ community noted that the killings were systematic.

In an article also published in the newspaper El Colombiano, they consulted Wilson Castañeda, director of the Caribe Affirmativo association. The expert assured that in the murders “there are patterns that allow him to think that they were systematic crimes”. The victims are: Juan David López Alzate, 31, Sahmir Javier González Sarmiento, a 28-year-old Colombian-Venezuelan, and Juan Danilo Bedoya Roman, age 30.

“Of these four crimes that occurred this year there is a modus operandi that occurs in the residences, an alleged vehicle involved, a similar practice at the crime scene, and an alleged robbery that diverts the attention of the authorities,” Castañeda told the Antioquia newspaper.

The Mayor's Office of Medellín announced rewards for those who provide information to find the perpetrators of these murders, who are still under investigation to establish how they were perpetrated.

It should be recalled that murders of people in the LGBTIQ+ community increased between January and March 2020 with 19 cases, after falling in the same period of time since 2016, when 16 were registered, to 12 in 2017, reaching nine in 2018 and reaching seven in 2019. In 2021, 8 homicides were reported and this year there are 5, according to data from the Mayor's Office of the Antioquia capital.

The Diversity Management said that it is making progress in the creation of a color map to provide information about which sectors of Medellin are most at risk to this population. At the moment they recognize that communes 8 and 10 are the most dangerous in these cases.

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