In Venezuela, some hope for end to police harassment of LGBT?

Yonathan Matheus

Source: www.unes.edu.ve

[Google translation]

For the Human Rights Defender gender diverse community, Yonathan Matheus, stories of abuse by the old police model, are not stories, are actually very close, which is embodied in the face of many street sex workers Libertador and yours.

To overcome the old police model is necessary for those who have suffered, explain their peculiarities and among all people build new ways to exercise police functions

In many opportunities to talk about the abuses committed by the old police model, it can become an issue anecdotal, can be thought they are prepared to scare stories. This "reach" that trivializes a very serious problem occurs when those violations to the dignity no face.

For the Human Rights Defender gender diverse community, Yonathan Matheus, stories of abuse by the old police model, are not stories, are actually very close, which is embodied in the face of many street sex workers Libertador and yours.

"I have had several brushes with police officers, one for the work they do, which is care work transsexual people working in public road, another by my sexual orientation when I go to the places we frequent as a collective, where socializing, comes, often, the police and confiscate any reason in a disrespectful manner."

With regard to his work, during a round of provision of condoms and information material on the capital's busy street a group of police officers stopped him and threatened to kill him, Matheus has become for some of these representatives of the old police model an uncomfortable presence for their struggle for human rights of this vulnerable group.


With this incident, there are three opportunities where Matheus was found, face to face with the dangerous characteristics of the old police model, which identifies, without the slightest trace of doubt, as "suffering, death, social exclusion and use disproportionate force."

Q: What say you base that?

I rely, first, a little on the experience of many and many who have spoken about arbitrary arrests, beatings, extortion, kidnapping, sexual abuse by officials of law enforcement, first and take the opportunity to report, by Metropolitan Police.

Q: Why do you think?

With the name of social prophylaxis, on behalf of respect for morality and decency, go out to meet government orders that were on duty, at least here in the Capital District, and given the task of mistreatment and violate human rights, not everyone, but certain social groups.

With a pause, Matheus lists the victims of the old police model those who have different sexual preferences or gender identity differently, those who lack resources or have a particular political view.

On their particular expertise and knowledge of police abuse other third parties, human rights advocate, says that whenever he sees a representative of the old police model "I feel a mixture of emotions. I feel a mixture of panic, anger and disappointment."

On this last sense, add "see that some people who was given the task of ensuring the security and integrity of the citizens and the citizens, but have not (...) that could do something better, there is another possibility to exercise police functions and unfortunately they are missing out."

The human rights defender visited the facilities of the UNES on several occasions, with the intention to offer, both the monitors, and learners and learners, a first-person testimony from the world of sexual diversity and thus paradigms gain on future discriminatory officials and officials from the Bolivarian National Police.

About the new policing model, says "for me is looking down, completely, all those corrupt structures that tended to violate human rights, which tended to be segregated in the exercise of its functions."

Add "the new model should aim to remove all those structures and based on respect for individual dignity and human rights of everyone."

On the work performed by the UNES, Matheus said his greatest expectation is the formation of the new official and the new police officer "and that the guiding principle is respect for human dignity "without distinction of any kind."

"That flag has as respect for human dignity and in turn to human rights, above all, you have to do when you make some kind of crime or is in the presumption of it, to be respected at all times their fundamental rights and also provided that make use of force," he said.

At both students and the students, which will allow to leave behind the old police practice, he asked "that meet at any time, the legal frameworks that govern their actions and thus avoid violating human rights, non-discrimination and always be communicated to the communities to see first hand the realities and contexts that can live true and certain social groups and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past."

Finally, he stressed the importance of these groups, those who have been harassed by the old police model, to approach as a proposal to the GNP and to know in depth the conceptual framework that involves the change in the way of understanding the role police for thereby jointly build bigger and better levels of security.