India faces another embarrassing blow from the ally US
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NEW YORK - Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, two leading Democratic Party candidates for the 2020 US presidential elections; the Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Congressman Jim McGovern; and a number of other members of the US Congress have expressed reservations about New Delhi trying to silence or dictate the reaction of the US Congress to Indian excesses in occupied Kashmir.
The extraordinary reaction from both houses of US Congress comes after Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday cancelled a meeting with the very high profile and important Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Jaishankar had asked House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel to exclude Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal from the meeting, which Rep. Engel had refused.
Congresswoman Jayapal had moved Resolution 745 in Congress on Dec 6, 2019 against Indian atrocities in occupied Kashmir. Twenty-nine members of the Congress co-sponsored that resolution, which is most likely to be adopted soon.
In the resolution, Congresswoman Jayapal had asked India to lift the communication blockade imposed since Aug 5 in occupied Kashmir, restore all political rights of Kashmiris, release political prisoners and detainees, and allow human rights organizations and journalists access to the territory.
On October 22, 2019, when the subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee on Asia had held a scathing hearing on occupied Kashmir, Congresswoman Jayapal had strongly highlighted the abuse of human rights in Indian-held Kashmir after Aug 5.
