Zardari joins Bush, Wen in facing shoe-throwing

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

LAHORE: Asif Ali Zardari is the second world leader, after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who has been greeted by shoes instead of cheers and whoops while addressing a gathering in England, making this country an ‘unsafe’ venue for key politicians to express their views in public.

While President Zardari was ‘subjected’ to this treatment on Saturday evening at Birmingham, a student was also arrested in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2009 after he was found guilty of throwing a shoe at the visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during the Communist leader’s speech at Cambridge University.

While the shoe hurled at the Chinese Premier had landed several meters from him, the culpable student was quickly apprehended by security and handed over to police for questioning on suspicion of committing a public order offence.

The man heaving a show at the Chinese Premier had stood up and shouted, “How can you listen to the lies he is telling?”

The incident occurred while Premier Wen, on a three-day visit to the UK to strengthen economic ties, was speaking about China’s role amidst the global economic recession. Along with former US President George Bush Jr, Zardari hence becomes the only second head of the state in the history, who has ducked two shoes thrown at him in quick succession.

On Dec 14, 2008, Bush found two shoes coming his way, while he was addressing a press conference in the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s office to mark the signing of a security agreement. Bush also wasn’t hit by the shoes, which had both sailed over his head after they were thrown one after the other. The US president had shrugged and said, “I’m OK” after the incident in Baghdad.

“All I can report is it is a size 10,” Bush was quoted as commenting afterwards.

According to the Bloomberg television in the US, the Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi throwing shoes at Bush had shouted in Arabic, “This is the farewell kiss, you dog.”

Zeidi was a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo. Bush had ended his visit to Baghdad by addressing more than 1,000 troops at Camp Victory, the staging area in Baghdad for the US forces.

He was greeted by cheers inside the late Saddam Hussein’s Al Faw palace, where he was seen standing beneath an American flag.

The Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at Mr Bush won worldwide fame but was jailed and reportedly tortured by the investigating agencies.

Similarly, on April 7, 2009, a Sikh reporter Jarnail Singh also threw a shoe at the Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram during a news conference in New Delhi after he was infuriated over the minister’s reply to a question.

The Indian minister, who was speaking about 1984 riots in which hundreds of Sikhs were killed, had leaned back to avoid the hurled shoe which narrowly missed him.

BBC had quoted Chidambaram as saying,” Please, take him away, gently, gently, gently, doesn’t matter, please, settle down, please settle down.” Though Jarnail Singh had missed its target, it did trigger off a larger expression of anti-Congress sentiments among the Sikh populace, a sentiment that soon gained momentum.

However, the shoe did not stop there. Soon shoe-throwing incidents became a common fare in India at least. Politicians and electoral candidates such as a Congress legislator Navin Jindal and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani, had also found shoes of all numbers and shapes directed at their foreheads in election gatherings that followed.