Radical women take over Mexico City street, assault motorist
Apr 15, 2022, 3:04 AM | Updated: Apr 16, 2022, 4:39 am
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s human rights agency demanded an investigation Friday after about a half dozen masked women dressed in black attacked a woman’s car with hammers and metal pipes.
The National Human Rights Commission said the assailants belonged to a group of radical feminists who took over one of the commission’s office buildings 1 1/2 years ago in Mexico City’s downtown historic district.
The female driver said the women demanded money Thursday for allowing her to drive down the street, which is where the commission’s still occupied offices are located.
Mexico City prosecutors said they were investigating the attack as a robbery case as well as the infliction of damage because the car’s windows were bashed out.
In security camera footage, one of the assailants carrying a megaphone and a hammer shouts, “You know what the procedure is,” apparently referring to the “toll” that the attackers were charging.
Later in the day, Mexico City police chief Omar Garcia announced that police had ended the takeover of the rights commission’s building, and confirmed the occupiers were the ones who attacked the motorist.
“The building where the attackers were has been recovered, in order to prevent it from being used for further acts that put citizens at risk,” Garcia wrote in his social media accounts.
Members of a group of masked feminists calling themselves “The Black Bloc” have regularly smashed windows at buildings and bus stops during marches called over the last three years protesting the killings of women.
In September 2020, the group took over the human rights commission’s offices along with relatives of crime victims. The victims’ families were demanding that their cases be investigated.
The commission said it has been working with the families to meet their demands.
But the commission said it was not the first time that passersby had been victimized by the group of radicals.
“The National Commission is concerned by the events that have happened around the site. A number of victims have filed complaints and publicly documented” attacks, the commission said in a statement. It urged Mexico City authorities to end the occupation.
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