China toughens up border security over IS recruitment fears

Authorities claim Uyghurs from Xinjiang are joining Islamic extremist group.

Islamic State militants stand near their flag shortly before an air strike on Tilsehir hill near the Turkish border at the Yumurtalik village, in Sanliurfa province, Syria

Beijing:  China has started enforcing stricter border checks in a bid to stop Islamic extremists from joining terrorist cells in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, state-run media said on Monday.

Following recent reports of minority Muslim Uyghurs fighting for the Islamic State (IS) and arrests in Indonesia, police have started gathering and sharing terrorism intelligence with neighboring countries along China’s vast frontiers, according to the state-run China Daily.

“Border police have stepped up efforts to prevent and combat such cases,” it quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

China is expected to pass a new antiterrorism law this week that would include more stringent controls of the already heavily censored internet, sharing of information across state agencies and greater cooperation with other countries.

In May, the government began a one-year ‘strike hard’ campaign in restive Xinjiang province amid a series of deadly attacks that have left hundreds dead this year, mostly in western China.

Uyghur militants have reportedly increased connections with international Islamic groups, which has coincided with IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi labeling China as a violator of Muslim rights.

“Your brothers all over the world are waiting for your rescue, and are anticipating your brigades,” he said during a speech in Mosul, Iraq on July 4.

Last month, Iraqi security forces released images of what appeared to be the first captured Chinese militant fighting with IS, and also in September Indonesian police arrested and charged four Uyghurs accused of working with Islamic terrorism groups in central Sulawesi.

China’s state media has since regularly linked Muslim separatists from Xinjiang to overseas terrorist groups, including IS.

“Their final destination is to return to China to plot and conduct more terrorist attacks,” the anonymous government official was quoted as saying on Monday.

Although police have stepped up security checks on main roads in provinces including Yunnan, China’s mostly remote border regions with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam remain porous.

Officials in Beijing have reportedly stated that Uyghurs are traveling overland to Southeast Asian countries where they are buying stolen or fake passports — typically in Bangkok — before traveling to the Middle East or other areas of Asia to join Islamic insurgencies.

However, critics of the harsh crackdown in Xinjiang have said Beijing appears to be exaggerating the size and scope of Uyghur militant groups to justify harsh anti-terrorism policies. Groups of Uyghurs fleeing persecution have also turned up in countries around Southeast Asia while en route to third party countries to seek asylum.

Authorities have tried to curtail independent information coming out of Xinjiang while painting separatists as a terrorist nexus across China’s vast northwestern region, as opposed to pockets of disgruntled but disorganized minority people, according to the assessment of some analysts.

William Nee, a China researcher for Amnesty International, said that Chinese claims of finding and shutting down dozens of terrorist cells in Xinjiang this year appeared overstated.

“Given the high level of security in Xinjiang [and] just the amazing amount of social stability apparatus … I just can’t imagine that [the government] would allow” a violent terrorist group to function in their midst, he said.

Source: ucanews.com