Tragedy is not a photo-op: Maryam Nawaz called out for ‘attempting to channel’ Angelina Jolie

The vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Maryam Nawaz Sharif recently paid a visit to the flood-stricken Taunsa to sympathise with flood victims. Dressed in an all-black shalwar kameez, she was accompanied by her husband Captain Safdar, other party leaders and about 60 security cars.

On Monday, the Vice President’s “candid” pictures from the visit drew ire for their uncanny resemblance to Angelina Jolie’s pictures from her visit to Pakistan in 2010. The pictures, posted by Nawaz on Twitter, see her interact with the flood victims and on occasion, hug them. “Heart-wrenching,” she captioned her tweet.Soon after, social media users started trolling her for “using people’s grief and sorrow as a photo-op for her PR strategy” and called the execution a “rip-off of the 2010 Jolie visit to Pakistan.”

Social media users pointed toward Nawaz’s choice of clothes, the angles of her photos, the “misuse of taxpayer’s money” and even called her out for leaving an “insensitive carbon footprint,” by bringing a dozen cars, security personnel, motorcycles, and more ironically to her visit in light of a calamity caused by climate change.

Infuriated, users became further enraged when a video of one of the flood victims surfaced. The victim alleged that “Maryam didn’t give anything, just hugged people for a photo session and left.”Soon after, social media users started trolling her for “using people’s grief and sorrow as a photo-op for her PR strategy” and called the execution a “rip-off of the 2010 Jolie visit to Pakistan.”

Social media users pointed toward Nawaz’s choice of clothes, the angles of her photos, the “misuse of taxpayer’s money” and even called her out for leaving an “insensitive carbon footprint,” by bringing a dozen cars, security personnel, motorcycles, and more ironically to her visit in light of a calamity caused by climate change.

Infuriated, users became further enraged when a video of one of the flood victims surfaced. The victim alleged that “Maryam didn’t give anything, just hugged people for a photo session and left.”A user shared a collage of Angelina and Maryam on Twitter and wrote, “Cheap third class copy of Angelina Jolie is roaming around in Pakistan. The whole family is desperately trying to be British. Shame on her. Maryam Nawaz went to meet flood-affected people of south Punjab with full protocol. Please fear God.”Another commented on how “shameless” her protocol was. “Maryam Nawaz’s protocol/cavalcade comprising 63 cars for photo ops in Taunsa is shameless and shows the complexes of the woman and the Sharifs that come with the looted and plundered money, not hard-earned or inherited.”