Brazil will join efforts to document, record, investigate and clarify historical violence committed against the LGBTQIA+ population. An unprecedented working group (GT) is being designated both to carry out the historical documentation and to propose new public policies that can promote the guarantee of the rights of this population. This week, the 17 members of civil society were defined. To detail how this work will be, Agência Brasil spoke with the president of the WG, the professor of law at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), Renan Quinalha. “I think it is a pioneering, unprecedented work, no country in the world that I have a record of has made a commission of this scope, with this degree of State engagement going to build a history, going to document a history and seek reparation policies for the violence that are committed against the population, including by the State itself”, says Quinalha. Unifesp law professor, Renan Quinalha, talks about efforts to document, record, investigate and clarify historical violence committed against the LGBTQIA+ population and institutional reform. Broad popular participation is also planned, with public hearings held in all regions of the country. “The work process itself will already be a repair in itself. So, it has to be done together with the community, with the movement, in dialogue with the entities, with their direct participation. This is the way we intend to work. We do not intend to work behind closed doors and then deliver a ready-made version of the story to the LGBTQIA+ population, we want to write together with the population, ”he emphasizes. The main focus of the group, according to the president, will be to identify and make official the various structural and institutional violence to which lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, queers, intersex, asexual and people of other designations have been subjected throughout the history of Brazil. Among these forms of violence are persecutions by the police and in the Brazilian justice system and operations to clean and sanitize cities, which occurred, for example, during the military dictatorship. “We are going to investigate not so much individual cases, but prioritize structural violence, institutional violence, cultural violence practiced against the population. We understand that, in Brazilian history from colonization until today, there are certain patterns that materialize in our state institutions that point to an institutionalized LGBTphobia”, says Quinalha. The working group to clarify human rights violations against LGBTQIA+ people in Brazilian history was created in May of this year by the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship. This week the 17 civil representatives who will compose the WG were announced. In addition to documenting what has happened so far, the WG will propose public policies to combat violence against the LGBTQIA+ population. “The LGBTQIA+ population doesn’t just have to survive. It is a population that has to have social rights, has to have public policies and these are the ones we want to recommend. We want to understand how public policies are going to repair these past inequalities and violence that are being perpetuated in the present. I think this is the great challenge”, says Quinalha. The group should also include representatives from the ministry itself, from the National Council for the Rights of LGBTQIA+ People; the Special Advice on Democracy, Memory and Truth, the Special Advice on Social Communication, among others. These members have yet to be defined. Quinalha clarifies that the group’s next steps will be defined in a meeting with all WG members. The group has a period of 180 days to carry out the work. The president anticipates that this deadline should be extended for another six months, totaling one year of work.
Agência Brasil
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