Two-hundred-and-fifty-six transgender
people have been murdered around the world in 2012.
According to the
Trans Murder Monitoring project, 256 transgender people have been
murdered in the past 12 months, a 20 percent increase from the
previous year. (A video remembering some of the victims is embedded
on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Tuesday's Transgender Day of
Remembrance (TDoR) sets out to remember those lost to senseless
violence and to raise public awareness around increasing rates of
violence facing transgender people.
Vigils in cities across the globe will
honor the memory of those lost. A listing of world-wide events can
be found at Transgender.org.
Another resource released by GLAAD to
coincide with today's events is a timeline illustrating transgender
milestones since 1952.
“With anti-transgender violence on
the rise, we remember our colleagues, friends and family whose lives
were taken simply because of who they are,” GLAAD President Herndon
Graddick said in a statement. “We must stand together to end the
violence, working every day to spread awareness and acceptance of
transgender people.”
TDoR founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith added:
“The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses
we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no
stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply
exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase
transgender people – sometimes in the most brutal ways possible –
it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that
we continue to fight for justice.”
The first Transgender Day of
Remembrance was held in 1999 to memorialize the murder of Rita
Hester, a transgender African-American woman whose 1998 murder
remains unsolved.