Rodrigo Ventocilla: the suspicious death of a trans-Peruvian Harvard student after being detained by police in Bali
A dozen relatives, friends and activists demanded this Wednesday in Lima that a necropsy be done to establish the causes of death of the Peruvian trans Rodrigo Ventocilla, deceased in Indonesia after being arrested by the Police of that country.
In the first days of last August, vent and her husband, Sebastian Marellano, they arrived at Bali to enjoy their honeymoon, but they were arrested for alleged possession of drugs and, days later, in circumstances that have not yet been clarified, Rodrigo died in a hospital. vent He was studying for a master's degree at the School of Public Management at the Biomedical Engineering faculty at Harvard University (At Cambridge, USA) and had completed an internship at a Johannesburg NGO on gender equity and social inclusion.
After knowing this information, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs de Peru issued a statement that generated controversy in the country, since it claimed to have provided consular assistance and follow-up to the case and denied that the arrest of the couple responded to acts of racial discrimination and transphobia, as reported in the Andean country.
controversial statement
The pronouncement of the Chancellery was rated as "offense” by organizations defending the rights of the community LGTBI +, who now demand a process that determines those responsible for what happened.
The protesters also accuse the consul Julio Tenorio for not acting quickly in the case. The statement issued by the Foreign Ministry where there is talk of the crime of drug possession, adopting the police version, and denying that there was transphobia behind the arrest without mentioning Rodrigo's death "it's a national embarrassment«, they say.
The Ombudsman's Office considered it worrying that the statement makes conclusive statements when there is still no investigation of what happened.
"We are asking for what this Constitution and this Government are supposed to ensure, justice for Rodrigo”, pointed out one of the demonstrators who addressed the participants in the sit-in from the front of the Public Ministry.
Discrimination and transphobia
The relatives of the couple denounce that the detention and death responds to an act of discrimination and transphobia by the Indonesian police. In addition to the fact that they demanded huge sums of money for their freedom, between 13 dollars and up to 100 dollars each, they indicate that the rights to health, freedom, access to legal defense and information were violated.
“We demand justice and reparation in the face of the signs of kidnapping, extortion and torture of our colleagues Sebastián Marallano and Rodrigo Ventocilla, both arbitrarily detained. We are here to urge the authorities to assume their responsibility in the face of acts of racial discrimination and transphobia”, denounced the politician and activist Gahela Cari during the sit-in.
Lawyer Julio Arbizu added that “airports have haphazard screening protocols for visitors, migrants”, but in the case of vent this was done bythat mismatch between your identity and your data in the passport".
"That is already an element of transphobia”, he remarked before pointing out that the couple was not only deprived of their liberty “but also absolutely incommunicado; even without being able to access to confer with their lawyers".
