Pakistan envoy to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi on Sunday showed a photo of a girl injured by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, passing her off as a victim of Indian security forces using pellet action guns in Kashmir. Pakistan’s UN Mission even tweeted the photo Rawya abu Jom’a at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and claimed it to be a picture from Kashmir.
The photo, taken by Heidi Levine inside the Gaza Strip in 2014, has been used by both The New York Times and The Guardian in their online galleries.
Pakistan had brought up the issue of Kashmir at the United Nations on Sunday in response to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s remarks a day earlier about its neighbour being “the greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity”.
Lodhi claimed India is the “mother of terrorism in South Asia”, and accused New Delhi of carrying out a “campaign of brutality... including shooting and blinding of innocent Kashmiri children with pellet guns.” Lodhi said Swaraj belonged to a political party “which was accused of assassinating Mahatma Gandhi”, and called the Indian Army’s presence in Jammu and Kashmir illegal.
“Kashmir is not part of India,” Lodhi stressed, adding that the global community needs to collectively make India stop violating the ceasefire arrangement. Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN taunted India, saying the largest democracy is also “the world’s largest hypocrisy”.
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