Thailand bomb blast puts spotlight on China crackdown on Uighurs

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When Thai authorities this week linked the trafficking of Chinese Muslims with the deadly bomb blast at a Bangkok temple, they placed the horrific attack squarely inside a much larger issue facing China, which has witnessed mounting hostility among its minority Uighur people.

In a series of information updates, Thai police said the key suspect in the Aug. 16 bombing, which killed 20 and cast a pall over the country's sunny image, was involved in the trafficking of Muslim Uighurs out of China.

Thailand in July deported 109 Uighurs back to China, amid a broader crackdown on human smuggling that followed the discovery of mass graves inside Thai borders.

The attacks may have been reprisal, Thai national police chief Somyot Pumpunmuang said.

"When they were blocked from using the country as a pathway, they turned to take action against us with anger," he said Tuesday. "I do not think it is right."

As Thailand seeks Chinese favour and investment, police and authorities there have been slow to pin blame for the attacks on anyone related to China. But the ties to Xinjiang, the far western Chinese region where Uighur people have faced repressive religious and cultural policies, have grown increasingly clear.

Travel documents suggest the attack's alleged mastermind, Abudureheman Abudusataer, was born in Xinjiang. This week, Thai police said Mr. Abudusataer had carried a Chinese passport and fled the day before the blast, leaving first to Bangladesh and then, two weeks later, to Turkey. (Turkey has denied providing entry to Mr. Abudusataer.)

The attention on Mr. Abudusataer has cast a new light on the southeast Asian networks that have been built to sneak Uighurs out of their homes. It's the latest wave a long-standing exodus that has gained speed in recent years following terror attacks in major Chinese cities blamed on Uighur extremists, and an intense Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang.

It's unclear how many Uighurs have sought to leave China in recent years, or how many have succeeded in reaching Turkey, a country that provides sanctuary for Uighurs – considered part of the wider family of ethnic Turks – who reach its borders.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees does not track their numbers; a spokeswoman said Uighurs "don't generally approach UNHCR for assistance."

The best evidence lies in the numbers that have been detained or found by authorities in smugglers' camps, which number in the several hundreds. That suggests the total number leaving China has reached "thousands over the past two years, if not more," said Michael Clarke, a Xinjiang expert who is an associate professor at the National Security College at Australian National University.

One Chinese report from August suggested that roughly 1,000 Uighurs had arrived in Turkey from the beginning of the year.

Uighur departures date back to the very beginning of modern China, with what Prof. Clarke called a "small exodus" of people, many supporters of the defeated Kuomintang, toward Turkey following the Communist takeover in 1949. Another wave moved into Central Asian Soviet states in the following decades, fuelled by ill will toward increasingly radical Chinese policies, as well as warmer feelings toward Soviet Russia. At the peak, in 1962, "at least 60,000 Uighurs and Kazakhs fled to Soviet Kazakhstan," he said. More left in the 1990s, following independence of Central Asian states.

What's happening today, Prof. Clarke said, has echoes of the 1950s and 1960s, "in the sense that it is driven by growing Uighur disaffection with Chinese rule in Xinjiang."

It has also, he said, further highlighted a contradiction for China, which has warned about a terror threat from inside its borders while at the same time arguing that its policies in Xinjiang have brought wealth and stability to the region.

But national stability efforts have included a concerted effort to weaken and subjugate the local culture. Chinese policies, enforced through lengthy imprisonment and heavy surveillance, interfere with the transmission of religion from parents to children and have expunged the Uighur language from most classroom instruction. In some Xinjiang cities, local authorities have pushed to secularize the Muslim community by promoting sales of alcohol and cigarettes. Employees of governments and state-owned enterprises are barred from praying during the workday; during Ramadan, some are also forcibly kept from fasting. Soldiers armed with sub-machine guns maintain a war-like presence around mosques and train stations.

"The problem for Beijing in my view is that they've created a self-fulfilling prophecy here," said Prof. Clarke. By silencing civil outlets for dissent and opposition, it has left violence – both inside and outside China's borders – as one of the few remaining protest options.

"In this environment it is not surprising that some may be turning to globally oriented jihadism as means of combatting what is perceived as Chinese domination or imperialism," he said.

Yet it's not clear to what degree those Uighurs leaving China have any desire to commit violence. Many are simply looking for better lives, and turn to illegal means of transportation because China heavily restricts travel for Uighurs.

One of the few sources of information about Uighur departures comes from the records of those detained at Guantanamo, which illuminate a complex picture. Some Uighurs left China in pursuit of terror training, while others left to escape reprisal for their role in protests, to conduct business or out of a sense of frustration with Chinese policies in their homeland.

"The overall majority of them appeared to be just trying to flee the country," said Sean R. Roberts, a cultural anthropologist at The George Washington University who has studied the Uighur population.

In China, state media has called illegal exit routes an "underground railway" to terror. It has leaned heavily on neighbouring nations to send back Uighurs, often linking trade deals with the return of people who have escaped from Xinjiang. Many of those subsequently disappear in China, which routinely tortures and executes those it accuses of serious crimes like terrorism.

But even among Uighurs who joined extremist groups, some may have done so inadvertently, Prof. Roberts said. People "were leaving Xinjiang for other reasons and ended up meeting people who recruited them to these organizations," he said.

Contrasting accounts have further muddied understanding of the issue.

In the case of a bloody 2014 knife attack on a train station in China's Kunming, for example, Chinese authorities have said some of the Uighur assailants had previously sought, and failed, to leave for Vietnam. But the official narrative on their motive differs dramatically with what the Uighur community has said.

In Kunming's Yunnan province, local party chief Qin Guangrong said the group of attackers "originally wanted to join jihad" – and opted to kill in China instead when they were blocked from leaving. A Uighur source, however, told Radio Free Asia that the group was fleeing an aggressive police crackdown in Xinjiang, and the attack was born out of their frustration with China.

"They were likely reacting to the extra-judicial killings that have occurred about a dozen times last year in Xinjiang," the person said. "Their message to the government was, 'We can do something also.' "