Death threats assail Brazil's trailblazing trans candidates as they campaign

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Benny Briolly beamed as she strode through the concrete favela alleyway in a snow-white dress, volunteers proudly waving campaign flags emblazoned with her face.

The city councilwoman and nearly 1,000 other transgender politicians are running Sunday in every one of Brazil's 26 states, according to the nation’s electoral court, which is tracking them for the first time. The number of candidacies has tripled since the last local elections four years ago, when trans rights group Antra mapped them.

As trans people have set their sights on political office, many have been met with intimidation efforts bent on turning them away, including a candidate in Brazil’s biggest city who survived an assassination attempt last week.

More trans people — 100 — were murdered in Brazil last year than in any other country, according to Transgender Europe, a network of global non-profits that tracks the data. Those precise statistics are almost certainly driven by a combination of poor reporting elsewhere and Brazil's active network of advocates, but experts agree that transphobia is ubiquitous.

On International Women’s Day last year, Nikolas Ferreira — the federal lawmaker who received more votes than any other — donned a blond wig in Congress’ lower house. He said it allowed him to speak as a woman and denounce trans people.

In 2022 Rio state lawmaker Rodrigo Amorim called Briolly “an aberration of nature” in the state's legislature.

Such tactics rally voters by portraying trans people as a menace to be courageously fought, according to Ligia Fabris, a gender and law specialist and a visiting professor at Yale University.

Both Amorim and Ferreira were staunch allies of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Transgender politician Leonora Áquilla, a candidate for city council in Sao Paulo this year, said that Bolsonaro had inflamed transphobia and that she has had to stare down people shouting death threats to her face.

Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 but transphobia has far from retreated.

Since entering the public eye, Briolly has received over 700 death threats. Some have included the address of her home in Rio de Janeiro’s metro area and warnings that she would suffer the same fate as city councilwoman Marielle Franco, a champion for LGBTQ+ rights who was gunned down in 2018. That threat prompted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to demand that Brazil provide Briolly protection.

She won’t be scared off her reelection bid even though some may want her dead.

“When we get into politics, our bodies become threats and we become constant targets,” Briolly told the Associated Press, with the city of Niteroi — across the bay from Rio — stretching out behind her. “Our bodies are revolutionary, are daring ... they are bodies that emanate hope to all those who were left behind.”

Áquilla narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on Sept. 26. She was in northern Sao Paulo on her way to look into reports of transphobia when a motorcycle deliberately slammed into her car. When she got out, the driver revved his engine, and instinctively she ducked. The bullet from his gun missed her, and he fired more shots as she lay there, pretending to be dead. He escaped and Áquilla has ceased in-person campaigning.

“There have been so many threats they became banal; we never thought it would happen. I’m completely in shock. I’m taking a sedative, because I can’t control my nervousness, my anxiety,” she said in a video call. “Right on the eve of the election, the moment when I most need to be on the streets, they’re trying to silence me.”

Duda Salabert, who is running for mayor in Brazil’s sixth biggest city, Belo Horizonte, made history in 2022 when elected alongside another trans woman to Brazil’s lower house of Congress. Their victories were widely regarded as a breakthrough for trans representation, but Salabert said that during that campaign she received death threats daily.

“I had to walk with an armed escort ... I had to vote with a bulletproof vest, according to police instructions, and I couldn’t go into large crowds because I risked being attacked,” she said.

This year, Salabert said she is seeking to become the first trans mayor of a major city in Latin America.

“It’s a joy, because we’re making history, but it’s sad because our candidacy highlights the entire history of exclusion, violence and alienation of the transvestite and transgender community from electoral processes in Brazil and Latin America,” she said in a video call.

Indianarae Siqueira, a trangender sex worker and longtime activist running to be a city councilor in Rio, says that increasingly seeing trans people occupy places of power has had a snowball effect.

“Those who managed to win and are there — I think this is a reference and gives incentive so that people want to enter (politics),” she said during an interview on the steps leading to Rio’s municipal assembly.

Back in the Niteroi favela, Briolly agreed that there’s an element of joy to playing an active role in politics, even amid the threats.

“For me, it’s pride — a latent, powerful pride — that grows more and more in my heart and in the heart of each and every person who believes that my body and my voice are just a reflection, an empowerment of the collective struggle,” she said. “When a Black trans woman moves, she moves the whole of society."

Indianarae Siqueira, a transgender woman running for city council, poses for a selfie with a supporter at an LGBTQIA+ pride parade in the Mare neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Hannah-Kathryn Valles)

Benny Briolly, center, a transgender woman running for city council, canvases with supporters and members of her campaign team in Morro do Estado, in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hannah-Kathryn Valles)

A campaign member of Benny Briolly, a transgender woman running for city council, waves a banner during a campaign event in Morro do Estado, in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hannah-Kathryn Valles)

Indianarae Siqueira, a transgender woman running for city council, attends a rally led by state employees in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, Sep. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hannah-Kathryn Valles)

Benny Briolly, a transgender woman running for city council, poses for a photo during a campaign event with supporters and members of her campaign team in Morro do Estado, in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hannah-Kathryn Valles)

LONDON (AP) — Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was accused in a London court Monday of being a leader in the Irish Republican Army responsible for three of the paramilitary group’s suspected bombings in England.

Adams is being sued in London's High Court for allegedly being directly responsible and complicit for decisions by the Provisional IRA to detonate bombs in England in 1973 and 1996.

“The defendant carefully draws a distinction between being a member of ‘the Army’ and being a member of Sinn Féin," attorney Anne Studd said. “That was a distinction without a difference.”

Studd represents three men wounded in the bombings.

The allegation against Adams is an old one, but this is the first time a court is being asked to decide if it's true.

Adams is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland ’s decades of conflict. He led the IRA-linked political party Sinn Féin between 1983 and 2018 and helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. He has always denied being an IRA member, though some former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.

“The only thing that I am guilty of is being an Irish republican committed to ending British rule in our country and seeking to unite the people of Ireland on the basis of freedom, equality, peace and solidarity,” Adams said after the opening day of the trial.

The claimants are seeking vindication — not money. Adams is being sued for the nominal sum of 1 pound ($1.33).

The trio claims Adams was a member of the IRA's decision-making Army Council and was as responsible as the men who planted the explosives during “the Troubles,” the three decades of violence involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and U.K. soldiers. Some 3,600 people were killed, most in Northern Ireland, though the IRA also set off bombs in England.

John Clark, a police officer, had shrapnel lodged in his head and hand from the 1973 Old Bailey courthouse bombing in London. Jonathan Ganesh suffered psychologically from the 1996 London Docklands bombing. Barry Laycock was left 50% disabled, suffered emotionally and struggled financially from the 1996 Arndale shopping center bombing in Manchester.

“There is no doubt that the defendant contributed to the peace in Northern Ireland, but the claimants say that on the evidence, he also contributed to the war,” Studd said.

Adams, who is expected to testify in his defense during the nonjury trial due to conclude next week, “emphatically, unequivocally and categorically denies that he was ever a member of the IRA,” attorney Edward Craven said.

Adams was never charged with the bombings or even arrested on suspicion of being connected to them, Craven said.

The 77-year-old was charged with being an IRA member in 1978, but the case was later dropped because of a lack of evidence.

Adams won a 100,000 ($116,000) libel verdict last year against the BBC over a claim in a television documentary that he authorized the killing of an informant inside the Irish republican movement.

Craven said the claimants had a mountain to climb to prove their case and they had not even arrived at the foothills.

He said that Adams sympathized with and shared the IRA’s goals and sought to justify their actions, though he didn't support all those acts.

“That makes him, in the eyes of some people, a deeply controversial figure,” Craven said. "It does not mean he was factually responsible for the bombings.”

Claimant Barry Laycock poses for a photo outside the Royal Courts of Justice, where a civil claim is being brought against former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams by three men who were injured in Provisional IRA bombings on the UK mainland in the 1970s and 1990s, in London, Monday March 9, 2026. (James Manning/PA via AP)

Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, center, arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice, where a civil claim is being brought against him, in London, Monday March 9, 2026. ( James Manning/PA via AP)

Claimant Barry Laycock poses for a photo outside the Royal Courts of Justice, where a civil claim is being brought against former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams by three men who were injured in Provisional IRA bombings on the UK mainland in the 1970s and 1990s, in London, Monday March 9, 2026. (James Manning/PA via AP)

Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice, where a civil claim is being brought against him, in London, Monday March 9, 2026. ( James Manning/PA via AP)