A 20 year-old trans woman was murdered in the early hours of Sunday (16 September) in the city of Votuporanga, state of SÃ£o Paulo, Brazil.

The body was found near a dumpster in a rural region of the city. The victim’s genitals and one ear were found to have been cut off.

The Brazilian military police, who are investigating the case, suspect that the trans woman, who was a sex worker, was possibly taken to the remote location and murdered by a client.

The police still has no clues as to the identity of the murderer.

The victim was said to be a resident of the town of Tanabi, in the state of SÃ£o Paulo and her funeral service was held on Monday (17 September).

Crimes against trans people shocked the state SÃ£o Paulo. Last month, a 23 year-old trans woman was brutally murdered in the city center of Clementina.

Two people were arrested in connection with the murder.

In mid-August four trans women were shot in the city of SÃ£o José do Rio Preto, SÃ£o Paulo state. Two died from their wounds while the two others were taken for intensive care in local hospitals.

Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the shooting, one of them an ex-police officer.

Brazil’s Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) documented 266 murders of LGBT people in Brazil last year, six times more than in 2010.

According to Professor Luiz Mott, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Bahia and founder of the GGB: ‘The underreporting of these crimes is striking, indicating that the number represents just the tip of an iceberg of cruelty and blood.

‘Since the federal government refuses to build a database on hate crimes against LGBT people, we based this report on newspaper and online news, which is certainly far from covering all of these claims.’

The report claims Brazil has the highest rate of LGBT people murders in the world.

In the US with a population more than twice the of Brazil’s, had nine cases of transgender murders in 2011. In Brazil, 98 trans people were recorded as murdered.

The report also suggests that the risk of a gay man being murdered in Brazil is 800% higher than in the US.

The GGB announced that every 33 hours a Brazilian LGBT person was brutally murdered in 2011 as a victim of hate crime.