Global village,November 27 :From shoes to pies, to tried and tested hands, vigilantes haven’t been limited by their choice of means to express their anger against public figures — from Dubya Bush to Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan.
Here’s a who’s who of some of the famous targets.
AROUND THE WORLD…
GEORGE W. BUSH:
On a surprise visit to Iraq in 2008, the former US president cut a really sorry figure when he ducked to escape a size 10 shoe hurled at him by an Iraqi journalist, Muntazer Al Zaidi, during a news conference. “ This is the farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” Al Zaidi screamed in Arabic.
“ This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.”
WEN JIABAO:
The shoe might have landed a metre away from the Chinese prime minister, but even his country’s firewall censors couldn’t stop the public display of outrage during his speech at Cambridge University in 2009 from going viral on the Net. “ How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator here?” 27- year- old German national Martin Jahnke had shouted while targeting the prime minister.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI:
An assault left Italy’s colourful former prime minister’s face covered in blood at a rally in Milan in 2009. Massimo Tartaglia, 42, who had no previous criminal record, had hurled a statuette at Berlusconi, striking his target in the face and leaving him with a broken nose and bloodied mouth. Tartaglia was seen signing autographs in Milan just before he was taken into custody.
ASIF ALI ZARDARI:
Pakistan’s President was in the middle of a speech at a rally in Birmingham in 2010 when an elderly man hurled a shoe at him. It didn’t hit Zardari, but the message behind the action got conveyed to the world — Zardari had no business touring Britain at a time when his country was sinking in devastating floods. The attacker, identified as Shameem Khan, was led away by the police, questioned and later released without charge.
RUPERT MURDOCH:
When the culture committee of the British Parliament was questioning the media tycoon, a man lunged towards him with a shaving foam pie, shouting “ you naughty billionaire”. Jonathan May- Bowles, the man behind the pie, had tweeted just before the incident, “ It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before.” Bowles had to serve a six- week sentence for his pie protest.
CLOSER HOME…
P. CHIDAMBARAM:
Dainik Jagran journalist Jarnail Singh created high drama at a press conference addressed by the home minister in New Delhi on April 7, 2009, when he threw a shoe at Chidambaram. Singh’s shoe hurling seemed more spontaneous than the other planned attacks.
He was upset that the minister refused to talk further about the CBI’s clean chit to the two main accused of the 1984 anti- Sikh riots, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.
L. K. ADVANI:
The 2009 parliamentary elections saw an increasing number of shoes being chucked at election rallies and press conferences. Just 10 days after the Chidambaram episode, it was the BJP leader’s turn to be targeted by a shoe thrower. A BJP worker identified as Pawan Aggarwal threw a wooden khadau at Advani when he was going up on stage to address a public meeting in Madhya Pradesh. Aggarwal called Advani “ a fake iron man” who did not deserve to be the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant.
OMAR ABDULLAH:
What was supposed to be a solemn occasion — the unfurling of the national flag on Independence Day 2010 — was turned into a joke when a shoe was hurled at Omar Addullah from the third row of the VIP enclosure, not by an angry young man, but by a policeman.
After three months of protests, Abdullah had hoped to use the occasion to reach out to the state’s youth, but it was the shoe hurler, Jan Mohammad, who stole the limelight.
JANARDHAN DWIVEDI:
The Congress spokesperson became the target at a press conference earlier this year when a man identified as Sunil Kumar from Rajasthan posing as a journalist attempted to pelt Dwivedi with a shoe.
Dwivedi had just mocked Baba Ramdev for dressing up as a woman to avoid being arrested by the Delhi Police after his Ramlila Maidan fast drama.
This had upset Kumar, who was grabbed by Congress workers and beaten up before being handed over to the police.
PRASHANT BHUSHAN:
This was the first televised assault of a public figure.
The Team Anna member and Supreme Court lawyer was beaten up in full view of a television camera by two people inside his chambers last month.
Bhushan was thrashed, kicked in the chest, slapped and dragged by the feet by a young man identified as Inder Verma and his two associates.
Bhushan’s pronouncements on Kashmir apparently had triggered the assault.
“ This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” Al Zaidi had shouted while throwing shoes at the then US president, George W. Bush