CWAers in Puerto Rico Rally for Justice after Murder of Gay Student

CWA members joined thousands of demonstrators last week in San Juan calling on the government to treat the horrific murder of a 19-year college student killed because he was gay as a hate crime.

Puerto Rico has had a hate crime law since 2002 but it had never been applied to cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity. The Puerto Rico Department of Justice now has agreed to investigate this brutal murder as a hate crime; a suspect has been arrested.

CWA At-Large Executive Board Members Madelyn Elder and Nestor Soto condemned those whose harsh opposition to hate crimes laws based on sexual orientation has helped fuel hatred and intolerance.

"Many political and fundamentalist religious leaders have campaigned against members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community, promoting, in their expressions and actions, a climate of intolerance and violence that end in acts such as the heinous murder of this young man," said Soto, president of Local 33225 in Puerto Rico.

"These same political and religious leaders have maintained, in the words of human rights activist Pedro Julio Serrano, 'a deafening silence' by not expressing solidarity with the family of this young man, nor condemning this terrible murder," he added.

Madelyn Elder, president of CWA Local 7901, pointed out that 11 years after Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Wyoming, and only one month after the U.S. Congress passed an expanded Hate Crimes law to include crimes based on sexual preference and gender orientation, another murder of a gay man occurred, because he is a gay man.

"Passing laws is not enough to deter such violence. Rigorous enforcement and, as a nation, meaningful support for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities is vital to turn around the hatred which leads to such crimes," she said. "To treat this crime as 'normal' is unjust, she added.

"We hope that events like this do not occur in our country, or any other country. We express our solidarity and sorrow with the victim's family, the LGBT community and with all who struggle daily for the equality of all human beings regardless of race, sex, nationality or sexual preference," Soto said.

For more information about issues affecting LGBT persons, go to http://prideatwork.org.