The brutal murder of a young woman, who was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, has sparked mass outrage in Mexico after photos of her mutilated body were leaked to the press.
Ingrid Escamilla had her organs and skin removed, in what is believed to have been an attempt to hide evidence of her grisly murder.
Leaked images of her mutilated body were then splashed on the front page of Mexican newspaper Pasala alongside the caption: “It was cupid’s fault”.
A suspect has been arrested, with the capital city’s mayor saying on Tuesday that prosecutors would request the maximum sentence for the 25-year-old’s murderer.
Escamilla’s partner, who she had been living with, can be seen being interrogated by police in a video circulated by press in the country.
Her partner, who is doused in blood sitting in a police vehicle, can be heard telling police he stabbed Escamilla in a row over his drinking and admitting to getting rid of her body parts in drainage.
Critics hit out at the fact that harrowing photos of Escamilla had been published and shared photos of her looking happy and wearing brightly-coloured lipstick on social media – with the hashtags #IngridEscamilla and #JusticeForIngrid gaining traction.
Karen Ingala Smith, who has been tracking the numbers of women killed by men for an annual census on femicide in the UK, told The Independent: “The killing of Ingrid Escamilia is shocking in its perverted brutality, but every deliberate murder of a woman should shock us and provoke a response. Too often men’s fatal violence against women is accepted as normal.
“That a media outlet has chosen to share an image of Ingrid’s mutilated body is an assault on the memory of her and compounds the distress of those who loved her. It can do nothing positive. That the same source blames love with the caption ‘It was cupid’s fault’ is equally ignorant.
“Violent and abusive men chose to kill, the responsibility is theirs, violence is never an act of love and love should never be used to absolve violence.”
Femicides, defined as the gender-motivated killing of women, are prevalent in Mexico and more than 700 cases are currently being investigated. According to official data, an average of 10 women were killed a day in Mexico in 2018.
Some 44 per cent of women have suffered violence from a partner and 66 per cent of women have experienced some form of violence during their life, according to the Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography.
The United Nations deem Latin America to have the world’s highest rates of femicide.
Parsala has been contacted for comment.
