Gay marriage but no hate crime laws: Thai LGBTQ+ activists see gap

MANILA - When a Chinese tourist in Pattaya murdered a trans woman in April, the LGBTQ+ community in Thailand called the incident a hate crime.

But Thai law doesn't include the designation hate crime, leaving accountability for bias-motivated violence elusive in the Southeast Asian country.

Crimes such as those linked to gender identity are not legally defined nor recorded or punished, and an assault or murder motivated by bias will be considered an ordinary offence by the courts.

Penalties are not enhanced, and no specific actions are taken to address or prevent such violence.

Although Thailand passed a marriage equality law in January and promotes queer tourism with campaigns to attract LGBTQ+ travellers and its bid to host the WorldPride 2028 celebration, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are overlooked, activists say.

Countries across the region also lack data on such crimes, according to participants at a forum in September organised by the Transmasculine Network for Equality (TransEqual), a group advocating for toms, a term for masculine women, transmasculine people whose gender identity aligns with masculinity and those who are non-binary.

Advocates and experts at the forum defined hate crime as an offence driven by malicious, hostile intent arising from prejudice due to differences in belief, class, social status and gender.

“Hate crimes can occur to people of every gender identity,” Atitaya Asa, founder of TransEqual, told Context.

“However, LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender people, are more often targeted and face bias-motivated violence because of societal prejudice and myths that the world only has two sexes -- male and female," he said.

Thailand scores high in public support for LGBTQ+ rights even as it fails to provide hate crime protections, according to Equaldex, a platform that tracks LGBTQ+ rights globally.

“The current legal penalties and the absence of a clear legal definition of hate crime leave protection gaps for LGBTQ+ people because the law does not recognise these acts as crimes motivated by prejudice and hatred,” said Asa.

After the murder of the 25-year-old trans woman in Pattaya, the Thai government was urged by the LGBTQ+ community to take steps such as creating a national hate crime database and increasing penalties for crimes driven by hate such as assault, murder or property damage.

The Chinese tourist accused in the Pattaya case was arrested and has confessed to the murder.

"Safety nets and protections"

Violence against toms, trans men and non-binary people often involves rape or sexual assault, forum participants said.

In Bueng Kan Province, a tom was raped and impregnated by her uncle in 2021 to “make her a real woman,” and a 15-year-old tom in Bangkok was lured by an offer to buy a motorcycle and badly beaten by the seller, Asa said.

“Although the two cases above were not formally ruled as hate crimes, they point to ongoing violence against transgender people especially toms, trans men and non-binary people in Thailand," he said.

Official figures do not reflect such crimes, as government data follows a binary sex classification listing just males and females, he said.

The legal gaps raise questions about promoting LGBTQ+ tourism when many queer Thais face discrimination and violence, said Nachale Boonyapisomparn, co-founder of the Foundation of Transgender Alliance for Human Rights.

“We have to build infrastructure, safety nets and protections for our own people ...[so that] everyone who comes to Thailand feels safe, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation,” said Boonyapisomparn.

Not all foreign visitors to Thailand understand and accept LGBTQ+ people, adding to the need for protections, she noted.

“They may come with that conservative mindset that harms LGBTQ+ people,” she said.

Barriers to justice 

Countries like Thailand that do not track data on hate speech or hate crimes limit understanding of the extent of the problem, with police tending to downplay sexual motives, abuse or harassment, according to the 2023 Country Report on Human Rights Practices by the U.S. Department of State.

“Limited understanding of gender diversity and transgender issues among public officials often makes the justice process unfriendly to victims and sometimes compounds harm through bias,” said Asa.

The situation is similar in other parts of Southeast Asia, where hate crime databases and protections against LGBTQ+ people are nonexistent, and some countries, such as Brunei, Malaysia and Myanmar, criminalise same-sex relations.

Even in the Philippines, considered one of Asia's most LGBTQ+-friendly countries, full protection from hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity exists in only one of its 82 provinces.

Monitoring cases globally, the Berlin-based NGO Transgender Europe recorded 350 murders of transgender and gender-diverse people worldwide between October 2023 and September 2024, with 37 cases in Asia.

Calling for clear legal definitions and dedicated monitoring mechanisms for hate crimes, TransEqual said it will publish a situational survey and proposals for developing tools and policies related to hate crime.

(Reporting by Mariejo Ramos. Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst.)