UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. human rights chief said in a new report that lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people are victims of “pervasive, violent abuse, harassment and discrimination” in all regions of the world and cites hundreds of hate-related killings.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said actions by some countries to reduce violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity since the last report in 2011 have been overshadowed by continuing human rights violations against these groups, too often perpetrated with impunity.
The report to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council circulated Monday cites the murder of transsexual women in Uruguay and of black lesbian women in South Africa, and the killing of a gay man in Chile by neo-Nazis who carved swastikas into his body. In February 2015, it said, photos appeared to show several men, allegedly accused of homosexual acts, being pushed off a building to their deaths in Syria by militants of the so-called Islamic State extremist group.
While data is “patchy,” the report said available information suggests alarmingly high rates of violence against LGBTs.
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The report also gives many examples of non-lethal violence including the arrest, beating and ill-treatment by police in Zimbabwe of 44 members of an LGBT organization, a woman reportedly arrested in Bangladesh for being a lesbian who was allegedly raped by police while in custody, and four people arrested in Egypt for their alleged sexual orientation who were reportedly sexually assaulted by other inmates while in detention.
