We are not sick: Trans protest mental treatment decree
Peru health ministry’s mental treatment offer to transgenders sparks uproar.
Daily TribunePeru health ministry’s mental treatment offer to transgenders sparks uproar.
Police guard the entrance of Peru's Ministry of Health during a protest staged by LGBTQ groups against a new government decree listing transsexualism as a "mental disorder"
Cris BOURONCLE / AFP
We cannot live in a country where we are considered sick.
Jorge Apolaya, spokesperson of the Collective Pride March, a Lima-based rights group, made the statement Friday to stress the LGBTQ community’s disgust with Peru’s health ministry for expanding its list of insurable health conditions and offering transgender people mental health treatment.
The ministry’s decree also sparked the protest of more than 200 activists who demanded its revocation on Friday — the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.
“It is a regulation that violates us... they are positioning us as sick people, as if we have a problem,” said 25-year-old Afrika Nakamura.
“We demand the repeal of this transphobic and violent decree, which goes against our trans identities in Peru,” activist Gianna Camacho of the Coordinacion Nacional LGTBIQ+ told Agence France-Presse.
“We are not mentally ill and we do not suffer from any mental disorder,” she added.
With slogans like “It’s not a disease, it’s diversity!” and “We are trans and we are not sick,” the protesters blocked the busy avenue in front of the ministry for a few hours.
No clashes with police were reported.
The government said it would not scrap the decree.
Health ministry official Carlos Alvadrado told AFP that doing so would “remove the right to care.”
