SOLDIERS ABUSE TRANS INDIVIDUAL LIKE ANIMAL

A deeply disturbing video of soldiers humiliating and abusing a young transgender or cross-dressing individual in Ivory Coast has emerged online.

The video shows a group of soldiers dragging the victim, who appears to have been stripped naked, through the streets with her hands tied behind her back.

The soldiers are heard laughing as they pull her hair and turn her onto her stomach.

The men then tie her ankles to her wrists behind her back like an animal. At one point someone is seen grabbing her genitals.

It is unclear what happened to the victim.

The posting of the unsettling clip comes as LGBTI people are being increasingly targeted in the African country.

In January, the office of Alternative Côte d’Ivoire – an organisation working for the rights of LGBTI people living with HIV – was ransacked by a mob of around 200 people.

That same month, the house of the director of Alternative Côte d’Ivoire, Claver Touré, was attacked. A member of the security forces was reportedly among the attackers.

Several people working in the organisation were forced to go into hiding in fear of further attacks.

Erasing 76 Crimes reported that the video was the subject of a complaint by activist Jean Marc Yao to the National Commission of Human Rights in Ivory Coast (CNDHCI) last month.

“Indeed, the rise in homophobia that we are witnessing in our country has recently expressed itself by physical attacks on LGBT people or people suspected of being LGBT as well as attacks on places frequented by the LGBT community,” said Yao.

“Madam President, I advise the CNDHCI of the particularly humiliating and degrading treatment suffered by transgender women and cross-dressing men. This violation of human rights is visible in a video currently circulating on social networks…

“I appeal to the CNDHCI to protect the human rights of LGBT people as legal authorities have failed to identify and punish the authors of the barbaric aggression demonstrated by the video,” said Yao.

Sex between consenting adults of the same sex is legal in Ivory Coast, which has a population of around 20 million, but LGBTI people have no specific protection from discrimination under the law.

Watch the video on YouTube here. (Warning, the footage is disturbing.)