September 13, 2021

06:09

Marcela Leiros – from Cenarium

MANAUS – The violence committed against a young couple in Manaus in the early morning of Saturday, 11, caused revolt and reverberated in social networks. Emanuel Medeiros Marinho de Almeida and Jonas Nogueira Junior were shot in the Eldorado neighborhood, south-center zone of the capital, victims of a homophobic attack.

According to Manaus’ Manifesta LGBT+ Association, which, since 2017 has been working to promote the rights of the LGBT+ population in Amazonas, Emanuel – an associate member of Manifesta – and his husband suffered verbal violence, were shot “cowardly” by an armed man at the time they were leaving Eldorado Square, popularly known as “Crab Square”. They ended up being hospitalized.

In the repudiation note posted on Instagram, Manifesta LGBT+ also recalls that, on average, four cases of violence against this population are reported daily, an increase of “over 20%”, according to data from the Brazilian Public Safety Forum, released this year.

The association also reiterates the urgency for the LGBT+ population and its movements to articulate themselves and demand justice and necessary public safety policies from the State.

The victims were taken to Hospital and Emergency Care (HPS) 28 de Agosto. Jonas suffered perforations in both lungs and one of the shots went through the victim, hitting Emanoel’s shoulder, who was on the back of a motorcycle. Jonas is hospitalized in a stable health condition.

Violence

The 15th edition of the yearbook produced by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum indicated that there were 1,169 cases of malicious bodily harm (+21%), 121 cases of homicide (+25%), and 88 notifications of rapes (+20%) against LGBTQIA+ people in 2020.

Seven Brazilian states told the Forum they had no recent figures for violent crimes against the LGBTQIA+ population. In the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Maranhão, Ceará, Rondônia, and Rio Grande do Sul, the latter under gay governor Eduardo Leite (36), information was not available between 2019 and 2020.

In 2020, an unprecedented research by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), the Primary Health Care and Health Surveillance departments of the Ministry of Health, the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), with data from the Unified Health System (SUS), showed that every hour an LGBT person is attacked in Brazil.

Between 2015 and 2017, when the data was analyzed, 24,564 notifications of violence against this population were recorded, which results in an average of more than 22 notifications per day, that is, almost one notification every hour.

The report contacted the Civil Police of the Amazon to know if the case will be or is being investigated, but did not get a reply by the time this story was published.