Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she has filed a grievance towards a person who groped her and tried to kiss her as she walked between conferences within the capital metropolis, a day after a video of the incident went viral.
“If this occurs to the president, the place does that go away all of the younger girls in our nation?” Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first feminine president, mentioned on Thursday (AEDT).
“No man has the fitting to abuse girls’s private area.”
Video of the incident shortly unfold throughout the web earlier than being taken down by some accounts, underscoring for a lot of in Mexico the insecurity girls face in a rustic steeped in machismo and gender-based violence.
It has additionally raised questions on Sheinbaum’s safety element. Like her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum travels with minimal safety and makes herself extensively obtainable to the general public, together with wading into crowds of individuals.
She mentioned on Thursday that she didn’t plan to vary that apply, saying “we’ve to be near the folks.”
The incident occurred on Wednesday (AEDT) within the capital’s historic centre as Sheinbaum was greeting members of the general public whereas making the brief stroll from Mexico’s nationwide palace to the Ministry of Schooling.
The video exhibits a middle-aged man placing his arm round Sheinbaum, touching her chest and making an attempt to kiss her. She strikes his palms away earlier than a member of her workers steps between them. The president’s safety element didn’t look like close to her within the second.
Sheinbaum mentioned the person seemed to be drunk.
Newspaper accused of ‘re-victimisation’
She additionally blasted Mexican newspaper Reforma for publishing pictures of the person groping her, saying she thought-about it a “re-victimisation” and that it crossed an moral line.
“Using the picture can also be against the law,” Sheinbaum mentioned, pointing to laws towards digital violence. “I’m ready for an apology from the newspaper.”
The federal authorities’s Girls’s Ministry, created below Sheinbaum, issued an announcement on the day of the incident encouraging girls to report violence towards them, however asking media retailers “to not reproduce content material that violates the integrity of girls”.
Nonetheless, feminist activists have sharply criticised Sheinbaum previously for not doing sufficient to handle violence towards girls. Amongst different issues, they level to lacklustre prosecutions and investigations of femicides — the killing of a lady due to her gender.
In 2024, Mexico recorded 821 femicides, in line with authorities information. There have been 501 femicides recorded by way of September of this 12 months, and plenty of advocates say the numbers are probably far underestimated.
Sheinbaum mentioned sexual harassment ought to be a “prison offence, punishable by legislation,” including that she has requested the Girls’s Ministry to conduct a assessment of the authorized codes in every state.
Sexual harassment is against the law in about half of Mexican states, in addition to the capital, Mexico Metropolis.
Native media recognized the person who assaulted Sheinbaum as Uriel Rivera and a state safety submitting confirmed he was arrested on the evening of the incident.
