United Nations: Days after Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN used a photo to portray an injured Gaza girl as a Kashmiri pellet gun victim by mistake, United Nations General Assembly president Miroslav Lajcak has said that he will look into how to deal with the use of erroneous pictures.
In a major goof-up, Maleeha Lodhi on Sunday had flashed a picture of an injured Gaza girl with no connection to India while alleging that she was a victim of pellet guns in Kashmir.
Exercising her right to reply, hours after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj blasted Pakistan for its support to terrorism, the Pakistani envoy had held up a photograph of a woman whose face was peppered with alleged pellet gun wounds.
“This is the face of Indian democracy,” Lodhi had claimed.
The picture of 17-year-old Rawya abu Joma from Palestine, an alleged victim of an Israeli attack, was actually taken by award-winning American photo-journalist Heidi Levine in July, 2014.
When asked if he would like to set some sort of factual baseline when people make use of a wrong photograph, Lajcak said, “I will certainly think about it”.
At the same time, he said it was a matter of diplomacy.
“It is not for me to answer. It’s for the delegations that are involved. I want to use but not misuse my position as president of the general assembly,” he said.