Brutal Gang-Rape, Torture Of Young Gay Man Rocks Homophobic Bolsonaro's Brazil

A gay man in Florianópolis has been viciously gang-raped and tortured by unidentified assailants in a "barbaric" act of violence, spurring ire and protests from the LGBTQ+ community in Brazil.

The victim, who has not been identified for legal protection, is now recovering at his home. The public calls for justice come a week after he was brutally sexually attacked by three armed men in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina.

The attackers allegedly used sharp objects during the ordeal, forcing the victim to carve homophobic slurs into his legs at one point, The Guardian reported.

The suspects then abandoned him in the middle of a Santa Catarina street where he was spotted by passersby, who called an ambulance to rush the critically injured victim to a hospital for treatment.

Local police are now investigating the matter, according to Chief of Police Verdi Furlanetto. To date, no arrests have been made just yet following the appalling hate crime, which came to the surface during Pride Month.

“This is a frightening crime but it’s very common in Brazil. Violence is worsening not only against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people but also women, black people, and immigrants,” Lirous Ávila, president of the Association in Defence of Human Rights, said.

Ávila and a team of volunteers are now offering support to the victim and his family, Pink News noted. With Brazil among the deadliest places to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community, judgment has been split in the issue, with some people rocked by the recent attack and others seeking ways to justify the atrocious act because the man was gay.

“It’s absurd to justify violence that is brutal and barbaric,” Avila concluded.

Brazil holds one of the most alarming rates of violence and discrimination against LGBT people across the globe. The supreme court outlawed violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 2019. However, this did not stop homophobia from tormenting Brazil, leaving the country still lamentably submerged in a swelling tide of hate crimes.

Margareth Hernandes, a Florianópolis-based lawyer and president of the gender law commission, labeled conservative Brazil as "the world champion of LGBT murders," where hate speech breeds violence.

In 2020 alone, a staggering figure of 224 murders and 13 suicides of queer people were reported in Brazil, according to the watchdog group Grupo Gay da Bahia. However, these horrifying offenses frequently go unpunished or uninvestigated mainly because of systemic homophobia among law enforcement itself, Queerty noted.

Exasperated activists have lambasted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro over his repulsive apathy to the issue. The prominent political figure, who holds a long history of homophobia, has been "compounding" violence against the LGBT population, according to activists.

The Human Rights Watch is now calling on the Brazilian Government to take urgent further steps to curb the epidemic of violence against LGBT people in Brazil.