PAK, INDIA SPAR OVER TERROR TAG AT UN MEET
NEWDELHI: India is the mother of terrorism in South Asia and “a racist and fascist ideology is firmly embedded” in the Modi government, Pakistan said in response to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech at UN.
India sponsored and aided terrorism against all its neighb ours, reports in the Pakistani media quoted its permanent representative to UN, Maleeha Lodhi, as saying. Lodhi attacked the BJP and raked up Kashmir once again.
New Delhi’s “current political luminaries belong to a political organisation that has the blood of thousands of Muslims of Gujarat on their hands”, Lodhi said, referring to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
India was ruled by a fascist ideology and it should stop supporting across-the-border terrorism, she said exercising Pakistan’s right to reply at the UN.
Addressing the UN general assembly on Saturday, Swaraj tor e into the neighbouring country, calling Pakistan a “pre-eminent exporter of terror ”.
Pakistan was open to resuming a comprehensive dialogue with India but it should include Kashmir, Lod hi said as she waved a picture of a woman whose face was scarred, with what looked like pellet-gun wounds. Later, it was found that the photo was taken by award-winning photographer Heidi Levine inside the Gazas trip in 2014, and the girl had been injured in an Israeli air strike.
NEWDELHI: Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, made an embarrassing faux pas on Saturday when she attempted to pass off a photo of a Gaza girl as that of a Kashmiri.
Lodhi was responding to Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s attack on Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly, calling it a “pre-eminent export factory for terror”.
Lodhi accused India of “crimes against humanity” and of carrying out a “campaign of brutality inside Kashmir”. To prove her point, she brandished a photo of a badly injured girl — ostensibly from Kashmir.
The official Twitter account of the Pakistani mission to the UN also tweeted the photo, and at the time of writing this article, it was the pinned tweet.
However, 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.
he photo had been featured in many online galleries, including by the New York Times and the Guardian.
The picture used by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN was reported by a number of media outlets as that of Rawia Abu Joma’a, a 17-year-old girl injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza city in 2014.
Swaraj had said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan’s nefarious export of terrorism. She also called Pakistan an exporter of terrorism.