Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, made a gaffe on Saturday when she tried to pass off a photo of Gaza girl as that of a Kashmiri in a bid to highlight the Indian atrocities in Occupied Kashmir.
Lodhi was responding to Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s “slanderous orgy against Pakistan” at the United Nations General Assembly.
Lodhi’s focus was Kashmir in reply to Swaraj’s strong attack on Pakistan, in which she called it a “terror exporting state”.
Lodhi said that India was committing crimes against humanity and had launched a campaign of brutality in the Occupied Kashmir; and to corroborate her claims she displayed a photo a Kashmiri girl which later proved to be of a Palestinian.
The photo in question was taken by award-winning photographer Heidi Levine inside the Gaza strip in 2014, and the girl had been injured in an Israeli air strike. The photo has been featured in many photo galleries posted online, including by the New York Times and the Guardian.
The picture was reported by a number of foreign media outlets as that of Rawia Abu Joma’a, a 17-year-old girl, injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza city in 2014.
