On 25 May 2016, transgender human rights defender Alesha died from six gunshot wounds received three days earlier, on 22 May 2016, in front of Asia Plaza in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Members of the Trans Action Alliance have previously faced persecution and harassment in connection with their human rights work. Alesha became the fifth member of the Alliance to have been attacked this year. In total, approximately 45 transgender people have been killed and 300 have suffered various forms of violence in the last two years in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
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On the evening of 7 May 2016, two unknown assailants shot Khurram Zaki dead, outside a hotel in the southern city of Karachi. In the weeks before he was killed, there had been online campaigns against Khurram Zaki and LUBP. The fact that the human rights defender was reaching an increasingly wider audience across ethnic, sectarian and religious divides in Pakistan seemed to generate the opposition of extremist groups whose hate and violence he exposed.
On 25 April 2016, human rights defenders Mr Xulhaz Mannan and Mr Mahbub Tonoy were killed by a group of unidentified men in their apartment in Kalabagan area, Dhaka. The killing of Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Tonoy adds to a series of horrific murders of bloggers and academics in the country.
On 23 March 2016, the body of prominent human rights defender, Father Vincent Machozi, was laid to rest three days after he was assassinated by unidentified men in army uniforms in the village of Vitungwe-Isale, near the city of Butembo.
On 22 March 2016, Mr. Sikhosiphi Rhadebe was shot dead outside his house by unidentified assailants purporting to be police officers. For the past several years, members of ACC with the help of local residents have resisted attempts by Mineral Commodities Ltd (MRC), an Australian-owned mining company, and its local subsidiary TEM, to access the titanium-rich Xolobeni coastal dunes. They felt the mining venture would lead to forced removal from their land and threaten their livelihoods.
On 18 September 2015, poet and LGBTI rights defender Ms Gloria Carolina Hernández Vásquez, also known as Génesis Hernández, was kidnapped and brought to the outskirts of Tegucigalpa where she was killed.