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The PML-N has come under fire after one of its official Twitter accounts posted a picture of actor Armeena Khan with her infant daughter and called them “youthias” after she criticised Maryam Nawaz online.

On April 9, Armeena retweeted an undated video in which an unidentified woman pretended to take a selfie with the PML-N leader and then proceeded to tell the politician “can you say my family are thieves?”

The video was shared by Shayan Ali, a staunch PTI supporter who’s based in the UK. It is not clear when the video was taken.

“Had this happened in Pakistan, the selfie lady would’ve ‘disappeared.’ I’m glad we have such freedoms in the U.K. where we hold our politicians to account. If you’re going to live on British soil then it is OUR rules. We have freedom of speech,” the actor wrote.

The Bin Roye actor responded to several people who called out the woman for heckling and disrespecting someone in public.

The discourse remained relatively civil until the official media account of the PML-N on Twitter shared a picture of Armeena with her infant daughter with a red cross over it.

“How will the sick-minded youthia’s train the coming generation and the fifth generation youthia will be at the lowest level,” it wrote in the caption. The term “youthia” is an expletive derivative commonly used as a slur for PTI supporters.

Many Twitter users promptly condemned using a child’s picture in an online political altercation, especially by an official account of one of the country’s largest political parties. Actor Osman Khalid Butt and author Shahbaz Taseer, among many others, asked the account to delete the tweet.

Armeena also responded to the PML-N’s tweet, saying, “Maryam Nawaz hates babies I guess. Poor thing couldn’t take it with her thin skin so sent her official goons to harass a private citizen of another country. I’ve never seen such a thing before from a mainstream political party before.”

Others also spoke up in support of the actor telling her to “stay strong”.

Armeena shared the PML-N tweet for a second time, asking what would have happened if the Conservative or Labour Party from the UK had done a similar thing.

“This is what fascists do. Attack infants and postpartum mothers. Imagine the Conservatives/Labour from the U.K. or some other mainstream party used my photo. They would be crucified, no matter what I’d said. If you are vying for future leadership, you CANNOT attack the public,” she wrote.

Armeena’s husband Fesl Reza-Khan asked the political party account to “apologise immediately”.

“PML-N leadership, you are responsible for this account. You have posted a photo of my infant, just to troll my wife, thus crossing all bounds of decency. My daughter & I have no interest in PK politics. But as a father I will protect my child. Apologise immediately,” he wrote.

PPP’s Kasim Gilani, son of former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, seconded Fesl.

This whole situation has highlighted the deplorable state of the country right now. A political party that is currently in government used a child’s picture in their political Twitter fight. They also called an infant a “youthia,” fully knowing the implications of the word and what it was derived from. The PML-N has not issued a statement or an apology for the tweet, but they should.

Children cannot be your political battlegrounds, no matter how deeply you resent their parent’s political beliefs. If you want to fight it out with the parents, go ahead, but leave the kids out of it. Apart from the very obvious arguments of consent and the unauthorised use of the pictures of minors, this was just a dirty move.

There was no need to bring Armeena’s child into the conversation if they wanted to go after her.

We don’t condone people celebrating and encouraging heckling and the verbal harassment of public figures in public spaces because they support opposing sides either and believe they too need a bit of introspection. This culture of hate only begets further animosity and polarisation in society. We must pause and ask ourselves if this is the kind of society we want to live in in the future — one where people are heckled and children are used to fight Twitter wars.