Brazilian gay group says 250 LGBT people killed in a year
A Brazilian gay group claims that 250 LGBT people were killed in hate crimes in 2010.
Grupo Gay da Bahia is part-way through compiling a report on the issue but says that the latest figures show that an LGBT person is being killed at a rate of one every day and a half.
Luiz Mott, founder of the group, told Terra Magazine that in 2009, 198 people were killed for being LGBT.
He also claimed that the true number of victims was likely to be much higher. His figures were based on press reports.
Mr Mott said that Brazil has “more than 150 gay parades [and] houses the largest association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender in Latin America,” but at the same time, it is “the world leader in deaths from this population.”
“Brazil has a death penalty, in practice, much more severe than those in most homophobic countries in the world,” he added.
The Brazilian government does not hold official figures on hate crime deaths but the country is believed to have one of the highest LGBT death rates in the world.
