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 Especially at risk are women and those who are transgender,
transvestite and transsexual, according to the report published in
the journal PLoS ONE.
"Migrants are subjected to a high level of violence while in transit
to the U.S.," write the authors, led by Rene Leyva-Flores, a
researcher with the National Institute of Public Health in
Cuernavaca, Mexico.
"Those traveling under irregular migratory conditions are targets of
even greater violence, a condition exacerbated by gender inequality.
Migrants transiting through Mexico from Central American and other
countries undergo violence more frequently than do Mexican migrants.
Protective measures are urgently needed to ensure the human rights
of these populations," the study team writes.
The authors did not respond to a request for comment.
To take a closer look at the level and types of violence that can
occur on the path to the U.S., the researchers surveyed 12,023
migrants who stayed at one of five shelters in Mexico between 2009
and 2015. Along with surveys, 58 of the migrants participated in
longer, in-depth interviews.
Overall, 29.4% of the migrants said they had suffered some sort of
violence along the way, with nearly 23.7% experiencing physical
violence, 19.5% experiencing psychological violence and 1.6%
reporting sexual violence.
Physical violence included beatings, thefts, extortions and
kidnappings; psychological violence included humiliation, threats,
rejection and insults; and sexual violence included rape, sex in
exchange for goods, money, protection, transportation or food.
Migrants who were female, transsexual, transgender or transvestite
were more likely than others to experience violence.
Migrants often experienced rejection and ridicule. A 33-year-old man
from El Salvador told the researchers, "The local people treat us
the same. It doesn't matter if you are from Honduras or Nicaragua,
because we are wetbacks. We don't have documents to migrate."
A 33-year-old Salvadoran woman reported: "A person raped me right
after I got on the train. It was one of those workers that are there
on the railway. He grabbed me by the hair, got me off the train and
put me in his car."
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A 22-year-old gay man from Guatemala described what it took to
survive: "If we have to get things with sex then we have to do it.
Maybe you don't want to but they take advantage of it. You do
everything on this trip. You have to drink water from puddles from
watering holes where cows have been. It's what you do to survive."
The new report shines a light on the suffering of those fleeing
north, said Terry McGovern, professor and chair of the Heilbrunn
Department of Population and Family Health and director of the
Program on Global Health Justice and Governance at the Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.
McGovern says she's not surprised by the numbers. "I'm actually
happy to see the attention given to (LGBT) migrants," she said. "You
constantly hear anecdotal stories about horrible things happening to
transgender people who are migrating. I'm glad to see this very well
documented."
The article also "does a really good job documenting how this is
happening," McGovern said. "And it humanizes the migrants. Reading
about women and girls having to trade sex for food or to take care
of their kids I think really captures the situation. It gives us a
snapshot of what is going on."
The study turns on its head the image many have of "relatively happy
people in a caravan," said Dr. Albert Wu, an internist and professor
of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "Rather, these
people are very likely to experience violence as they travel to seek
asylum in the U.S. It's a really perilous journey and we shouldn't
take what they are doing lightly."
Current policy changes may be making things worse, Wu said. "I think
the U.S. needs to accept responsibility for increasing the harm to
these innocent people," he said. "A really humane society would take
into account the health impact of its policies rather than the
political messages they might send."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2ZmBY50 PLoS ONE, online August 21, 2019.
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