Controversy with India over US Muslim Congress woman’s visit to Kashmir

Islamabad / New Delhi, Apr. 21 (EFE) .- Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim women to visit the US Capitol, visited Pakistan-occupied and Indian-occupied Kashmir this Thursday, sparking fresh condemnation. Delhi claims it violates its “regional integrity”.

Omar, who paid an official visit to Pakistan on Wednesday, met with Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry, the head of the Islamabad-controlled Kashmir government, today and expressed his concern over the situation in Kashmir on the Indian border.

During the meeting, US President Joe Biden assured Omar Chaudhry that he would “work with other members of Congress in the US Congress to show solidarity with Kashmiri people and raise the issue of Kashmiris with the administration.”

At a subsequent press conference, the Congresswoman explained that the US Foreign Office had conducted investigations into reports of human rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir and hoped that her visit to the region would intensify those violations.

Omar assured that “the punishments and concerns of those fighting for human rights and the Kashmir issue will be included in a future investigation into the United States,” the Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune reported.

Condemnation of India

The visit was condemned by New Delhi, which expressed outrage over Umar’s visit to “a part of Indian Kashmir currently occupied illegally by Pakistan.”

“If (Umar) wants to pursue his narrow-minded policy at home, that is his problem. But the violation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty in that regard makes the matter ours. This visit is reprehensible,” he told a news conference. Indian Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bakshi.

The Kashmir region has been at the center of the regional dispute between India and Pakistan since independence from the British Empire in 1947 and the partition of the subcontinent.

The two countries have waged several wars and minor clashes over the region, which is divided by a temporary border bordering Kashmir and is one of the most militarized areas in the world.

The Congress woman had already mentioned the Kashmir region when she condemned India’s human rights abuses in Kashmir under her control, one of the only Muslim-majority Indian territories, and called on international organizations to “document.” Going on there. EFE

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