Winton Lou Ynion, a gay doctoral student at the University of the Philippines at the time, was found dead with a knife was firmly planted in his skull on Aug.16, 2009. The 28-year-old was stabbed 40 times in the head, neck and chest by an unknown assailant in his condominium in Quezon City.
Five months earlier, the body of Vincent Jan Rubio, a 28-year-old gay film professor at La Salle College Antipolo, was found lying on a lawn wearing only a polo shirt and underwear. Local media reports say that Rubio might have been killed by two men who might have been “pick-ups”.
These are just two of 103 cases documented by Marlon Lacsamana and Reighben Earl Wystern Mendoza Labilles of the Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch. According to the duo who are conducting the online study and archiving reports of suspected LGBT-related killings, a total of 103 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Filipinos have been killed since 1996 including 28 cases during the first half of 2011 alone. Of the 103, 61 were gay men, 26 were transgender, 12 were lesbian, and four were bisexuals. The Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch project, which operates via its blog and on Facebook, is supported by a coalition of individual advocates and organisations.
Lacsamana, 34, who is a librarian by profession was friends with both Ynion and Rubio, began to document the cases as he combed through the news archives of local papers after realising that no one was keeping track of suspected hate crimes in the country despite such cases happening with seeming regularity.
He told Fridae: “It’s personal for me, when I first lost a friend to an indescribable death in March of 2009, I cried and felt hopeless and helpless, and it happened again in September of the same year. I felt there is something to be done. Many LGBTs in the Philippines I know were being killed. And being a librarian, I started collecting the names of the LGBT individuals who were murdered.”
According to the report “A Database of Killed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Filipinos” that was released on Jun 17, the killers preferred to stab their LGBT victims to death. Thirty-eight of the 103 victims died from multiple stab wounds while 20 were shot. Six were tortured before they were killed. Others were raped, or killed with a blunt object, or suffocated, or dismembered, or burned alive. The study also showed that LGBTS who belonged to the 25 to 44 age group were most vulnerable, with 46 of 103 victims in this age range; and with most crimes happening in the Greater Manila Area.
The cases are based on news reports and personal accounts of people who knew the victims personally collected through email and Facebook.
Although the cases cannot be verified at this time, the researchers posit that the “brutalities done to the murdered LGBT Filipinos are also suggestive that they were victims of hate crime.” The authors of the report acknowledged in their report that the cases they have counted have yet to be cross checked with official police records due to the “lack of formal ties with law enforcement officials.” Neither does the police classify cases as (possible) hate crimes due to a lack of official policy.
Lacsamana says the group’s immediate goal is to create a secretariat to collect data, monitor and evaluate the incidence of killings, increase the public’s and government’s awareness of the issues and implement policies that will recognise, investigate, document, and prosecute hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
He also cited difficulties when families of the gay victims did not want to reveal any information that might lead to the sexual orientation of the victims being known publicly, even if the victim was himself openly gay.
Download the “A Database of Killed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Filipinos” report (PDF).
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Reader's Comments
Hate crimes occur because hate exists, therefore addressing the CAUSE of hate should obviously be the utmost priority.
Hoewever, opening that box leads to rather disturbing observations, the first one being that the catholic church is largely responsible for keeping homophobia alive and well in every country where the Vatican has a stronghold (as in the Philippines). Needless to add, same goes with Muslim clerics wherever they manage to be in control of the so-called "masses".
Hypocrisy being the inseparable demon of all clergies, especially within the catholic tradition, they will tell you "oh no! we do NOT incite people to hate gays, all we're saying is that it's WRONG to be gay and even more WRONG to have gay sex. A subtle jesuistic difference : to be or not to be, to do or not to do. The "tolerant" official stance of the Vatican at the present time being : if gays can't help being what they are (but they should try hard nonetheless) at least they should refrain from all action... ie the epitome of hypocrisy.
But human beings need to believe in something. When that "something" comes with all kinds of crazy and dangerous ideas about right and wrong, natural and unnatural, it's manipulation in the name of religion and that is what clergies do.
When a Rottweiler bites someone to death you don't drag the dog to court, you blame its master, and rightly so. The question is, why do most human beings need someone to take over their minds, and can this ever be changed ? Would the price to pay be absolute chaos ?
These stories sure eventually agitate "HEROES" to do something like campaigns to trumpet GAY RIGHTS!!
Religion is here to stay.
All the gay bashing in the world will not change that fact.
All the religion bashing in the world will not change that fact..
I am very disturbed (particularly recently) by the increasing anti-religious sentiments and hatred in these forums, and often they are linked with racism.
Ridicule and hating only makes the opposite side EVEN stronger and much more determined.
Constant 'smashing' of religion here not only further alienates religious homophobes to the extreme, but also disenfranchises and disheartens those amongst us in the gay community that hold religion as a big part of their life.
It might also be noted, that many gay haters/bashers are not religious.
Change will happen, (as it already is within some churches) and it will happen within religions from forces within, not by external attacks.
But is the demise of religion really an answer?
I agreed with your comment.
It does not matter whether religion will be here for long time or short time. LGBT should promote human rights to protect themselves. Leave religion debate aside because it has nothing to do with human right laws. Most of the countries' state laws have excluded religion while making new laws and reviewing existing laws.
I do not have religion but I believe there are many people who are religious are good people, like many of my friends. They find peace in their religion, respect them. It is the way to show them that they have to respect LGBT as well. IF WE HATE THEM, THEY WILL HATE US. right?
Honor killing is one of this result.
Oh well, my friend like to say every minute a fool is born.
you didn't deserve this
I don't believe Philippine media any more than American media. They haven't the moral fortitude to tell the real truth anyway, all they want is viewership, which is why TV network and local news are going down the tubes to begin with. Make some freaking sense! Don't dilute the whole argument with extraneous crap.
And as for the religion haters, I don't know where you think your existence came from, random collisions of cosmic dust, or whatever, but as for me putting God first gives me more peace than any amount of hunk humping ever could.
back to the article, i feel so sad for those friends that being killed or tortured. i hope that philippines can really do something for it, as they are part of the country....
Leave your religion behind, it's between yourself and your creator.
For my brothers and sisters in Philippines, do take care, and watch each other.
perhaps similar crimes in other countries were not reported?
The devotion which I hold myself to is simple... I strive to live, love and be of service (imperfectly at times, but conscious and accountable for my imperfection). The issue of human rights must begin to illuminate what we confront worldwide in the GLBT community. Fortunately the UN has identified it as a measurable component to evaluate human rights abuses in countries around the world...at least the UN will be compiling the evidence as well.
For all its self promotion as a leader in human rights and freedom, those of us who live in the USA know that for GLBT we are still persecuted, politically and physically, and people still debate whether we are beaten for being gay, or beaten because someone else experiences gay fear trauma around us (its the PTSD defense for the murders of GLBT people in the USA). Anyway, yes we who are more protected must provide support and assistance to those living in areas in the world where they are adrift in a sea of intolerance, indifference, and targets of physical and mortal violence.
In Peace
bearnard
Religion is just a structure, but faith is the foundation on which it stands. Faith that means intolerance is a false faith, that puts one in a seat of judgement against another. That is part of why we have hate crime. One cannot see the beam in his own eye to see the speck in his brother's eye, or is all too willing to cast stones. That has been the theme of the Gospel all the time.
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