(Washington, DC) – A judge in San Salvador has found three police officers guilty of the January 2019 killing of Camila Díaz Córdova, a transgender woman, and sentenced each to 20 years in prison, Human Rights Watch said today. The court’s July 28, 2020 judgment is pivotal for the rights of transgender Salvadorans as it is the first homicide conviction for the killing of a transgender person in the country.
“This landmark ruling is much needed in a country where LGBT Salvadorans and their families rarely see justice for violent crimes,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The outcome of Camila’s case sends a powerful message to Salvadoran society that anti-LGBT violence will not be tolerated.”
Between October 2019 and April 2020 alone, at least seven trans women and two gay men were murdered in El Salvador, with details in the cases suggesting that the killers were motivated by hatred based on the victims’ gender identity or sexual orientation.
Victoria Pineda, a trans woman who was one of the victims, was found naked in Ahuachapán in November 2019 with her face disfigured and covered in logs and a car tire. Bianka Rodríguez of COMCAVIS, a transgender rights organization in El Salvador, said she believed Victoria was “crucified,” with the tire symbolizing a crown of thorns and the logs the wooden crossbar. Tita Andrade, another transgender woman, was found with burns over 90 percent of her body in March 2020 in La Unión. Such symbolic and brutal murders are often committed against people accused of “moral crimes.”
In 2015, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly recognized the gravity of homicides motivated by hatred of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and modified the Penal Code to elevate the penalties for such killings to up to 70 years in prison, categorizing them as aggravated homicides. A representative of the Human Rights Ombuds office in El Salvador told Human Rights Watch that to date, prosecutors have tried to classify just three killings of LGBT people, including the murder of Díaz Córdova, as hate crimes. In all three cases, the Ombuds office said, judges dismissed the hate crimes charges on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence. Though Díaz Córdova’s case did not ultimately include hate crimes charges, it is the first that has resulted in a conviction for the homicide of the transgender person. Read more via HRW