Who Is Ilhan Omar? India Condemns US Congresswoman’s Visit To PoK

US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is on a four-day visit to Pakistan from April 20 to April 24 where she has met the newly formed Pakistani cabinet led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and former PM Imran Khan. The Congresswoman, on April 21, Thursday, visited Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Her visit drew ire from India who condemned the visit and said that her “narrow-minded politics” violated its “territorial integrity and sovereignty”.

The Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, “We have noted that US Representative Ilhan Omar has visited a part of the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir that is currently illegally occupied by Pakistan. If such a politician wishes to practice her narrow-minded politics at home, that may be her business. But violating our territorial integrity and sovereignty in its pursuit makes it ours. This visit is condemnable.”

Congresswoman Omar has been critiquing India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States and has questioned the Joe Biden government recently as to why they were not taking cognisance of human rights violations in India. Omar, in the past, has accused the Indian government of pursuing an anti-Muslim policy as well.

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Who Is Ilhan Omar?

• Ilhan Abdullahi Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia on October 4, 1982. The politician spent her early years in Baidoa in Somalia. Omar was raised by her father Nur Omar Mohammed and grandfather after her mother Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein died when Omar was two.
• Ilhan’s father, grandfather and other uncles and aunts all were civil servants. The family fled Somalia to escape the Somali Civil War and spent four years in the Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa County, Kenya before they secured asylum in the United States.
• The family first arrived in New York in 1995 and then moved to Arlington, Virginia before moving to and settling in Minneapolis where her father worked as a taxi driver and later for the post office.
• Omar who is currently serving as US representative for Minnesota’s fifth Congressional district since 2019. The member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labour-Party (DLF), has previously served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2017 to 2019.
• Omar is the first Somali American and the first naturalised citizen of African birth in the US Congress and the first woman of colour to represent Minnesota. Apart from Rashida Tlaib, she is the only Muslim woman to serve Congress.
• Ilhan Omar started her career as a nutrition educator at the University of Minnesota from 2006 to 2009 in the Greater Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. She contested the election for the first time on a DLF ticket in 2016.
• Ilhan had helped campaign for other representatives until then and served as Senior Policy Aide from 2013 to 2015. By September 2015, Omar was the Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network, advocating for women from East Africa to take on civic and political leadership roles.
• Ilhan has always vocalised her criticism of many issues including the accessibility of education, issues queer community struggles with and others. She also called out the US for supporting a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court without becoming a member. She said, "It would be staggeringly hypocritical to support an ICC investigation into Russia while opposing the court's very existence as a non-member."