Mexican gay leader assassinated
On February 6, Neftal Ruiz became the latest victim in a wave of anti-gay violence in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico.
Ruiz was murdered in the town of Tuxtla Gutiérrez when an unknown person in a moving vehicle fired two bullets from a high-calibre weapon. The murder is regarded by the gay and lesbian community as an assassination, as Ruiz had been a public figure involved in demanding police investigation into prior murders of gay men.
Neftal Ruiz was vice president of the Grupo Gay Travesti, and one of the best known gay leaders in Chiapas. In the past year, more than a dozen other gay men and nine prostitutes have been assassinated in Chiapas, most of them shot with high-calibre weapons in or near the capital city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Despite clear signs of professional marksmanship and the striking similarity among the cases, the local police have done little to bring the perpetrators to justice, and none of the cases have been solved.
Violence against homosexuals and transvestites has been rampant in other parts of Mexico as well over the last year. On June 18, a young transvestite was beaten to death on the streets of Oaxaca. Three gay men were murdered in Mexico City on July 13, including Dr Francisco Estrada, founder and president of Grupo Ave de Mexico, an AIDS prevention organisation. And two gay men were found bound and shot to death in Guadalajara on August 9.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in the US is reinstituting a protest campaign directed at the Congress of Mexico and calling upon the government to protect all citizens, including gays and lesbians (especially visible leaders and organisations) from violent attacks.