Xinjiang | Beijing’s secret plan to track militants and bring them home

Days after Indonesia arrested four Uighur terrorism suspects in September in the country’s east, China dispatched three intelligence officers to ask authorities to hand them over.
While Indonesia initially demurred, China has now secured a preliminary agreement for the men to be returned after a trial in Jakarta, according to Irfan Idris, a senior official at Indonesia’s anti-terrorism agency. The four, who are yet to be charged, face potential execution if repatriated.
China pressed for the deal as part of a global operation begun last year to return terrorism suspects to Chinese soil, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the initiative is confidential. Many of the suspects are members of the Turkic-speaking Uighur Muslim minority, they said.
With the program, China is using a combination of diplomatic muscle and domestic suppression to counter Islamic extremism in the western province of Xinjiang, home to most of the country’s Uighurs and a region Beijing has long struggled to control. The initiative raises questions about whether Uighurs fleeing for fear of persecution may also be caught in its net.
“Beijing has long been concerned about the potential linkages between radicalized Uighurs and Islamist groups in Central Asia and Afghanistan, a concern only heightened with U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan,” said Michael Clarke, a research fellow at Griffith University in Brisbane who specializes in Xinjiang. “Moreover the perceived growth of ‘terrorism’ and radicalism in Xinjiang threatens that region’s stability and economic development.”
The risk for China is that any anti-Islamist push inflames separatism in Xinjiang. Its stated focus is to limit violence linked to alleged separatists in Xinjiang, after the bloody stabbing of at least 29 people at a train station in the city of Kunming in March 2014, and to stop them joining extremist movements such as the Islamic State.
While China hasn’t joined the U.S.-led international coalition against the Islamic State, it is working with some neighbors to find people who have sought to train with IS or with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant group that seeks independence for Xinjiang and parts of Turkey and Central Asia, according to the people with knowledge of the program. More than 100 suspects have been repatriated to China over the past year, they said.
“China is monitoring the movements of Uighurs in Indonesia,” said Sugeng Wahono, minister counselor for political affairs at the Indonesian embassy in Beijing who attended a January meeting between his country’s anti-terrorism agency and China’s top security chief Meng Jianzhu at Beijing’s Diaoyutai state guesthouse.
“They are being hunted” by the Indonesian authorities, he said, referring to three Uighurs being sought alongside the four currently detained.
China has said little in public about its global hunt for suspected terrorists. During the legislature’s annual meeting in March, Lu Xinhua, spokesman for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said China has launched an “anti-terrorism cooperation mechanism” with more than 10 neighbors. The goal is to share intelligence and curb terrorism especially by the ETIM, which operates from Pakistan.
Meng also hinted at efforts to repatriate suspects when he attended an international meeting of security agency chiefs in June in Russia. He has traveled to Southeast Asia and the Middle East as President Xi Jinping’s special envoy for cooperation on law enforcement and security.
“Some countries have already sent back a batch of terrorists that were based outside of China,” Meng was cited as saying in video footage aired on Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.
Retired General John Allen, President Barack Obama’s envoy on the Islamic State, said last month in Singapore he’d like to exchange information with China on the fight against the militant group.
The U.S. would like “to brief on what it is we are doing, to talk about those common aspects of the threat, whereby sharing perhaps best practices or even sharing information we could cooperate in some regard,” he said. “But we’ve just not had that conversation to this point.”
China’s National Security Commission and the Ministry of State Security don’t have media offices and were unavailable to comment.
The campaign is similar to the one operated by the Ministry of Public Security to track down economic fugitives – known as “Operation Fox Hunt 2014” – which authorities say has brought back nearly 700 Chinese. The two campaigns started around the middle of last year.
“Abroad, its counter-terror strategy is not only focused on countering networks that might be linked back home, but also recognizing the reality that China finds itself with a global footprint,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “That means its nationals can increasingly be found in dangerous areas where terrorist groups operate.”
Ansyaad Mbai, who was head of Indonesia’s anti-terrorism agency when the Uighur suspects were arrested, said the four men detained were traveling on Turkish passports.
“For the China government this is a very serious issue,” he said. China was “very worried that these people were going to be handed over to the Turkish Embassy.”
China’s actions may cause unease among some western governments given that human rights groups say Uighurs are also leaving for fear of ill-treatment in Xinjiang. The U.S. declined to send back to China 22 Uighur terrorism suspects held in Guantanamo Bay, citing the risk of political persecution.
Uighur advocates have accused China of a broader crackdown on daily life that includes limiting beards and headscarves, and instructing people not to fast during Ramadan.
Tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang have increased over the past year, with more than 100 people reported killed. Uighurs account for about 45 percent of Xinjiang’s 22 million people.
“China is trying to portray all Uighur refugees as Islamic extremists,” said Alim Seytoff, head of the Washington based Uyghur Human Rights Project. “No country should extradite any Uighurs back to China because of the political persecution they face there.”
Asluddin Hatjani, attorney for the four detained Uighurs in Indonesia, said his clients claimed they were only “taking a leisurely tour” of the region.
“The Chinese embassy has provided a translator for the men, but it appears they are frightened of him,” Hatjani said, adding he was unaware of the nature of the evidence against the men who could be charged under anti-terrorism laws that carry a potential death penalty.
As China looks to contain violence in Xinjiang, lawmakers are deliberating the country’s first anti-terrorism law, expected to pass later this year.
“The name of the game is if you do anti-terrorism campaigns, you’ll have collateral damage and casualties,” said Kam Wong, a criminal justice associate professor at Xavier University in Ohio who teaches courses on China’s security forces. “The big hole in China is there is no terrorism law. There’re no clear definitions of terrorism or terrorism organizations” until the law is passed.
It’s unclear how the proposed law may be applied to hundreds of people suspected to be from Xinjiang who are now being held in Thailand and claim to be from Turkey.
Worasit Piriyawiboon, a lawyer representing 17 people held in Bangkok for the past year for illegal entry, said his clients have Turkish passports and has petitioned a court to let the group, among them 13 children, be deported to Turkey.
“The immigration police don’t allow them to go back,” Worasit said. “They mention to the court that China’s government doesn’t allow,” he said. “The police told me this is a sensitive case.” Bloomberg