Maleeha’s statement in UNGA: Pakistan in dismay?

A  blunder embarrassed Pakistan once again when its envoy to UN Maleeha Lodhi displayed the picture of a Palestinian girl inside the UN General Assembly as a Kashmiri victim of Indian pellet guns.

Officials at the Pakistan Mission in New York, as well as those at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, are now trying to determine how a wrong picture was passed on to Ambassador Lodhi.

The picture that Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi displayed on September 23, while responding to a speech by the Indian foreign minister, was of 17-year-old Rawya Abu Jom’a who was injured during Israeli air strikes on her apartment in Gaza in 2014. The photo was taken by American photographer Heidi Levine.

The media in Pakistan, which had earlier reacted sharply to Swaraj’s speech, hailed Lodhi’s response as befitting. News reports in Pakistani dailies focussed extensively on Lodhi’s remarks, especially her allegations that India was the mother of terrorism in South Asia.

On Twitter, however, many Pakistanis called out their envoy for the embarrassing gaffe, saying it undermined the seriousness of her response.

Lodhi, who is quite active on social media, including on Twitter, was silent after it emerged that she posed a fake picture during her right of reply at the UN General Assembly.