La China
Age 3215 Apr 2026
Quevedo, Los Rios (Ecuador)
Shot
La China was shot dead in the city centre by unidentified assailants. She may have been executed by a criminal gang extorting payments from sex workers.
The Ecuadorian state has a victim's name: La China. Quevedo, Los RÃos — April 17, 2026.
Consultorio JurÃdico X, the specialized legal arm of Asociación Silueta X, administrator of Observatorio Runa Sipiy since 2013, in conjunction with Federación Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones LGBT+ (73 national collectives), the Plataforma Nacional Revolución Trans – CoaliTrans (22 national trans collectives) and oalición Quiteña Resistencia Rosa (8 local collectives), condemns in the strongest possible terms the murder of the woman known as "La China", a 32-year-old trans woman, who was shot dead in the street in Quevedo, Los RÃos province, on the night of April 15, 2026.
This crime is not an isolated incident. It constitutes the materialization of a systematic pattern of lethal violence against trans women in Ecuador, which the Runa Sipiy Observatory has been continuously documenting since 2013 and which the Ecuadorian State has been unable to stop, prevent, or effectively punish.
At Consultorio JurÃdico X, an agency specializing in the criminal classification of gender crimes and strategic litigation, we believe that this murder should be investigated under the criminal classification of transfemicide, in accordance with the standards of enhanced due diligence established by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the guidelines of the Minnesota Protocol for the investigation of potentially unlawful deaths.
The murder of "La China" occurred in a public place, on Tenth Street in downtown Quevedo, at 11:43 p.m., a time when transgender sex workers are most active in the area. The nature of the attack—a barrage of gunfire by unknown assailants without warning—exhibits the characteristic pattern documented by the Runa Sipiy Observatory in transfemicides perpetrated with the involvement of organized crime actors or their territorial networks.
From the perspective of Consultorio JurÃdico X, the case meets the criteria for classification under Article 141 of the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP) — Femicide, with the aggravating circumstance of Article 47, paragraph 11 of the COIP (crime motivated by gender identity prejudice), a classification that must be activated ex officio by the Attorney General's Office. The investigation's focus on a hate crime does not exclude the hypothesis of organized crime, but rather complements it: in Ecuador, the practice of criminal groups demanding extortionate "protection money" from transgender sex workers is documented, and their refusal to pay triggers executions.
Source: Centro de Apoyo a las Identidades Trans
https://siluetax.org/2026/04/17/transfemicidio-en-quevedo-mujer-trans-es-asesinada-a-tiros/
