The mayor of the Venezuelan municipality Simón Rodríguez, in the city of El Tigre, Ernesto Paraqueima, was arrested this Thursday and charged with hate crimes after describing as “horrifying” a mural painted by autistic children.
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In an audio that went viral, the mayor, who identifies “with the new opposition,” said: “Who painted that?, who painted that so horrible? (…) They tell me that it was the people of the little Asperger children. Who painted it? The children? What did they paint it with? with the legs? (…) What a horrible thing, so frightful!”
Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced the arrest for “promotion and incitement” to hatred with the aggravating circumstance of the violation of the Law for the Protection of Boys, Girls and Adolescents and another for the non-discrimination of children with autism spectrum disorder, this last law recently passed in parliament.
Hours before, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, had made the request to open the investigation.
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“This is how far you got Paraqueima!” said Rodríguez, in a session of the Assembly, which through a commission, went to the Public Ministry to ask Saab for the agency’s action.
The mayor had held that position between 2004 and 2008 and was elected again in 2021. Paraqueima said that the audio was a month and a half old and that it wasand “tricked to try to paste and take out of context some things that were not meant to be said”. “It has never been my intention to offend children with special conditions,” she wrote in another post.
The Asperger Foundation of Venezuela and the Venezuelan Autism Organization had urged the authorities to take action in the face of the mayor’s offensive comments.
It was not the first time that Paraqueima was embroiled in controversy. In the past, he has gone viral for handing out sex toys to the women in his municipality, as well as playing with underwear in stores.
Prosecutor Saab assured that the mayor is also facing investigations for “threats” to merchants and for harassing a woman to whom he allegedly sent messages with “obscenities, vulgarities and denigration.”
ANA MARIA RODRIGUEZ BRAZON
WEATHER CORRESPONDENT
CARACAS
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