Elizabeth Rondón. (Twitter)
A trans woman was reportedly beaten and brutally dismembered by her friends after going for drinks in an attack that has fuelled fear in Miranda, Venezuela.
Elizabeth Rondón, a 33-year-old vegetable seller, was slain Monday morning (13 June) after at least three people beat her, according to activists and witnesses.
Loved ones described Rondón as a quiet but charismatic person who traded vegetables for food in the Santa Cruz del Este neighbourhood of the Baruta municipality.
But her friends, they said, “bothered her a lot” for being trans, often harassing her for it.
On Sunday night (12 June), Rondón went to drinks with her friends who proceeded to cruelly mock her for being trans, witnesses told police, according to Agencia Carabobeña de Noticias.
Rondón, upset from the comments, hit back and a scuffle reportedly ensued. She then allegedly left with the group who beat her unconscious, police said.
The morning after, passers-by found her dismembered body in El Pozo. Her head had been severed off, her jaw detached, and her arms and legs all detached, a coroner report said.
Rondón is the fourth LGBT+ slain in Baruta this year, according to data collected by LGBT+ advocacy group Never Stop Dreaming. Fearing the “growing wave of violence” in the municipality, it tweeted: “They are killing us.”
Never Stop Dreaming called for “competent authorities to carry out an exhaustive investigation” while urging police to consider the killing a hate crime, considering that “trans women are not recognised” in Venezuela.
To Movimiento SOMOS, an activist group working from Mérida, the killings represent the “importance of Pride as a political response to systematic hatred”.
The group took aim at what it called the “indifferent” authorities, it wrote in a Twitter statement.
“Trans lives matter,” it added. “We demand justice for this and all crimes against LGBT+ done with impunity.”