US voices Kashmir concern as lawmakers raise tone on India

The United States on Tuesday renewed calls on India to ease its clampdown in Kashmir as several lawmakers voiced anger at actions by a country that usually enjoys robust US support.

Senior US officials also criticized Pakistan's record during a congressional hearing on human rights in South Asia, but nearly all lawmakers focused questions on India, which rescinded Kashmir's decades-old autonomous status in August.

Alice Wells, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, said the US"remains concerned" about the impact of India's actions in the Kashmir Valley.

She told told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee  that the United States was also concerned about the detention of residents including mainstream political leaders and about impediments to both local and foreign media coverage.

Representative Ilhan Omar charged that Kashmir is part of a pattern against Islam by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.

She pointed to reports of detention camps being built in the northeastern state of Assam, which borders Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Nearly two million people failed to prove their Indian citizenship in a controversial registration drive, with Modi's government vowing that "illegal" immigrants cannot stay.

"This is how the Rohingya genocide started," Omar said, referring to the bloody campaign by Myanmar against the mostly Muslim people.

Wells said US shared concerns but noted that the Assam citizenship registration was ordered by a court and that an appeals process was in place.

Representative Brad Sherman, who heads the House subcommittee on Asia, shot back: "A human rights abuse doesn't cease to be a human rights abuse just because it's being done pursuant to the law or court rulings of the country committing the abuse."