LAHORE - Punjab Inspector General of Police Mushtaq Sukhera on Tuesday joined the rank of those personalities who were shoed by the angry protesters.
During his visit to village Hussain Wala in Kasur district to show solidarity with the child abuse victims and residents of the area, the IGP had to face a hostile crowd. People of the area and relatives of the victims shouted slogans against police. They surrounded the IGP while he was trying to return from the scene. One of the protesters hurled his shoe on Sukhera but it hit another officer.
Throwing shoes at persons in position is a symbolic expression of furious mood of the public. Shoeing received attention after Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at the then US President George W Bush in a 14 December 2008, press conference in Baghdad, Iraq. Since the al-Zaidi incident, copycat incidents in Europe, North America, India, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong, Iran, Turkey and Australia have been reported.
Many Pakistani high profile politicians have given the same shoe treatment over the years by the agitated persons on different occasions both home and abroad so far. The very first known member of Pakistan’s shoe club was former Chief Minister Sindh Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim. Rahim was leaving the back door of the Sindh assembly building after taking oath as a newly elected member on April 8, 2008 when he was hit by a shoe thrown by Agha Javed Pathan, a worker from the Pakistan Peoples’ Party.
Former Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari was next to join him when he was targeted by a 50-year-old man named Sardar Shamim Khan, who hurled a pair of shoes at him during Zardari's visit to Birmingham, England.
Another former Pakistan President Musharraf Pervez Musharraf had to face the same twice. Musharraf was addressing a Pakistani origin gathering at Walthamstow, London when a man threw the shoe to protest against the US detention of Pakistani citizens in February 2011. A shoe was also hurled at former military dictator when he was coming out of the court room on March 28, 2013 in Karachi.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif also inducted into the shoe club when a media man hurled a shoe at when he was presiding over a conference in Lahore on April 14 last year.
The international members of this club after George Bush incident also include Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Indian Leader of Opposition and BJP leader LK Advani, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Indian Congress party’s General Secretary Rahul Gandhi and Chinese President China Ma Ying-jeou. And the list is not limited to these celebrities and is continually growing.