China deploys more troops in Xinjiang to plug infiltration

China deploys more troops in Xinjiang to plug infiltration

Pratiksha SharmaUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 04:28 AM IST
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Beijing: China arrested 27,164 criminal suspects last year in the volatile Xinjiang and authorities have beefed up security in the violence-prone region which borders PoK and Afghanistan by deploying more troops, making it the country’s largest provincial-level military region.

The military reinforcement comes against a backdrop of the US troops pulling out of Afghanistan and extremists launching terrorist attacks on civilian targets, state-run China Daily reported.

Xinjiang, the province with majority of Uygur Muslims is experiencing most violent attacks in by East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an Al-Qaeda backed outfit which became active in the backdrop of unrest between Uygurs and Han migrants.

Peng Yong, commander of the PLA Xinjiang military region, said troops will vigorously enforce border controls and carry out “realistic combat training”.

The Xinjiang military region is a regional command that covers Xinjiang and the Ali area in the west of the Tibet not far from Indian border.

“We have the responsibility to stay on high alert and strike hard against terrorist activities in the region,” Peng said.

Three more PLA Generals have been appointed to the Xinjiang military region, including Li Wei, a major general, who will serve as its commissar.

The two other appointees, Ye Jianjun and Han Bingcheng, are also major generals, the Daily report said.

Sources familiar with the Chinese military system said Xinjiang is the largest provincial-level military region in China, the report said.

It has four deputy commanders and four deputy commissars, while other military regions normally have only one deputy commander and one deputy commissar.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have approved the arrests of 27,164 criminal suspects last year, an increase of more than 95 per cent year-on-year, the chief prosecutor of the region was quoted as saying by the report.

“We’ve shortened the time between approving arrests and prosecution in major terrorist-related cases so the suspects can be tried as soon as possible to show the region’s determination to fight terrorism in accordance with the law,” said Nixiang Yibulayin, Xinjiang’s chief prosecutor was quoted as saying to the region’s legislature.

Significantly like other Chinese official media, the China Daily report too stated that Xinjiang shared border with Pakistan, while that part of the territory is part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir which links up with Chinese city Kashgar.

Li Wei, an expert on anti-terrorism said: “The PLA troops in Xinjiang will deal with large-scale terrorist forces.”

“They will concentrate especially on those carrying firearms smuggled from Pakistan and Afghanistan, rather than on individual terrorist attacks. They also need to keep an eye on the combat forces formed jointly by international and domestic terrorist groups,” he said.

Meanwhile, another official daily Global Times reported that 300 Chinese nationals, mostly Uygurs, used Malaysia as a transit point on their way to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the Chinese nationals had moved on to a third country from Malaysia and then entered into Syria and Iraq, adding that the information was disclosed with Chinese officials.

Recent reports said Uygurs started using Vietnam border to sneak out of China to travel to Syria, Iraq and Pakistan.

“Ahmad Zahid’s disclosure showed the importance of strengthening anti-terrorism cooperation between both countries,” said Li Wei, an anti-­terrorism expert with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

“Southeast Asian countries, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, have become popular transit points for Chinese nationals travelling to jihadist hotspots,” Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University said.

“They used to travel via Pakistan, but more of them are going via Southeast Asia now because Pakistan is working closely with China,” Gunaratna was quoted as saying by Hong Kong based South China Morning Post.

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