Jennifer Laude
She was killed by a US Marine in 2014 – his conviction, reduced sentence and pardon made her the face of violence against trans women in the Philippines.
Jennifer Laude was a Filipina trans woman from Olongapo, a city next to the former US naval base at Subic Bay. At the time of her death she was 26 and engaged to a German man.
On the evening of 11 October 2014 she met a US Marine at a bar who was in the Philippines for a joint military exercise. The two went to a nearby motel. Shortly afterwards Laude was found dead in the bathroom, strangled, her head in the toilet bowl. The Marine said he had only realised in the room that she was trans, and claimed self-defence.
The case became a national political issue. Under the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States, the accused was not held in a Philippine prison but in a guarded area at a military base in Manila – for many Filipinos a symbol of the unequal relationship between the two countries. Trans rights groups and other activists protested.
On 1 December 2015 a court in Olongapo found the Marine guilty, not of murder but of homicide, citing as a mitigating circumstance that Laude had not revealed she was trans. He was sentenced to six to twelve years, later reduced to a maximum of ten. Her mother said: “My daughter’s life is not wasted.” In September 2020 President Rodrigo Duterte granted the soldier an absolute pardon, and he was flown back to the United States. Laude’s family and queer organisations reacted with outrage. Jennifer Laude remains a symbol of the fight against violence towards trans women in the Philippines.