The only way to cut vim from mouse awareness seems to be to comment the configuration about mouse.
In /usr/share/vim/vim80/defaults.vim I commented out the mouse specific detection as in:
" In many terminal emulators the mouse works just fine. By enabling it you
" can position the cursor, Visually select and scroll with the mouse.
"if has('mouse')
" set mouse=r
"endif
(in those vim configuration files, " is initiating the comment).