Jean Wyllys, Brazil’s first and only openly LGBT+ congressmanm has left the country without intention to return after receiving an influx of death threats in the lead-up and wake of Brazil’s presidential elections.
Newly elected President Jair Balsonaro’s strongly anti-LGBT+ views made LGBT+ rights a key election topic, and are widely considered to have catalyzed a spike in anti-LGBT+ violence. Wyllys was a close friend of openly LGBT+ Rio councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was murdered along with her driver in March. Wyllys’s departure is likely to add to already high anxiety in the Brazilian LGBT+ community in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election.
Read more at The Guardian.