Video: Vigilante mob attacks transgender woman and gay man
Filed by: Guest Blogger
March 21, 2009 12:00 PM
http://www.bilerico.com/2009/03/video_vigilante_mob_attacks_transgender.phpEditors' Note: Guest blogger Dante Alencastre is a filmmaker and activist of Peruvian descent. He emigrated to the United States in 1976. Dante is currently working on a documentary on American transgender role models and recently premiered his documentary En El Fuego at LA OUTFEST.
On January 28th, 2009, a television news report showed an incident in which neighborhood watch patrols in the city of Tarapoto, Peru, chased and caught a travesti and her companion and then physically humiliated and insulted them. Neighborhood watch members cut their victims' hair and forced them to strip before subjecting them to a series of military training exercises until they collapsed from exhaustion. Throughout the ordeal, a crowd of onlookers made fun of the victims.
The perpetrators are seen on video insulting, and threatening the transwoman and boasting to the media about their way of getting rid off the "criminal" in their town.
