Indonesia Turns to China as Ethnic Uighurs Join would-be Jihadis

Bangkok Post

07 January 2016

Indonesian authorities are working with their counterparts in China to stem a flow of ethnic Uighur militants seeking to join Islamist jihadists in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia’s counter-terrorism chief said.

Saud Usman Nasution’s comments come amid mounting concern in Indonesia about possible attacks by sympathisers of theIslamic State group and follows the arrest of 13 men across the island of Java, including a Muslim Uighur with a suicide-bomb vest.

The appearance among Indonesian militant networks of Uighurs, who come from the Xinjiang region in far-western China, is likely to add to Beijing’s concerns that exiles will return to their homeland as experienced and trained jihadists.

… Bilveer Singh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said the direct involvement of Chinese Uighurs in Southeast Asian militancy added “an external dimension to the existing home-grown terrorist threat”.

“It could also complicate ties with a rising China, which may want to play a bigger counter-terrorism role in the region,” Singh said in a Eurasia Review article.

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