LGBTI youths flee Honduras to escape violence

The violence in Honduras has hit LGBTQ communities especially hard.

A group of youths who identify as LGBTI travel at a distance from the larger group of thousands of Central American migrants who are moving north towards the US border.

The group of at least 40 Honduran LGBTI youths say they face harassment at home and even along the route of the caravan, but remain determined to reach the US where they say they will have a brighter future.

“It has been very difficult because of the harassment, the bullying, the jokes, the ill-treatment towards us,” Honduran LGBTI migrant Josue Robles said. “They exclude us from things that we should be allowed to do, in other words, they treat us as if we were abnormal.”

Regardless, the group forges on, fleeing what they described as horrific violence if they stayed in Honduras.

“I am from Honduras which is a country that has a lot of violence … much more towards people who identify as gay or lesbian or trans. They kill people, they decapitate them, they dismember them and that provokes a lot of fear. It is for that reason I ran away because some of us have dreams, plans and goals that we want to accomplish and we want to prosper.”

[Abridged from TeleSUR English.]

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