Indonesia security forces kill two fugitive Chinese Uygur militants in Sulawesi shoot-out
Police said the men had joined Santoso, a militant in Poso in central Sulawesi, who is Indonesia’s most high-profile backer of Islamic State, and have been on the run for more than three years
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 16 March, 2016, 5:22pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 16 March, 2016, 5:27pm
Reuters in Jakarta
Tuesday’s shoot-out followed a challenge by security forces to a group of unknown men to identify themselves, during an operation to comb through a forested area of Poso. Photo: EPA
Indonesian security forces have killed two ethnic Uygur Chinese belonging to a militant network led by the country’s most wanted man, police said on Wednesday.
Indonesia has launched an aggressive, military-backed, security campaign in the jungles of Sulawesi island as it battles the threat from growing domestic support for the Islamic State militant group.
Police said the men, part of China’s Uygur Muslim minority, had joined Santoso, a militant in Poso in central Sulawesi, who is Indonesia’s most high-profile backer of Islamic State, and have been on the run for more than three years.
Tuesday’s shoot-out followed a challenge by security forces to a group of unknown men to identify themselves, during an operation to comb through a forested area of Poso, which is more than 1,600km northeast of Jakarta, the capital.
“Based on testimony from another suspect we had arrested, those two were identified as Uygurs,” said Central Sulawesi police spokesman Hari Suprapto, adding that authorities had notified the Chinese embassy in Jakarta.
A Chinese embassy press official said no information had yet been received on the deaths, however.
Four other Uygur men were jailed last year for attempting to join the same militant network, whose leader authorities say they have cornered, after a hunt that lasted more than a year and involved hundreds of troops.
“We have been successful in surrounding them. Their supplies have started to dwindle,” the chief security minister, Luhut Pandjaitan, told reporters last week. “We hope Santoso will surrender, but we are prepared for the worst-case scenario.”
Asked for an expected time frame, he gave no details.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uygurs keen to escape unrest in their far western Chinese homeland of Xinjiang have travelled clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey.
China says they often end up crossing into Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State militants.
Hundreds of people have been killed over the past few years in resource-rich Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of central Asia, in violence between Uygurs and ethnic majority Han Chinese.
Beijing has blamed the unrest on Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Uygurs is more to blame. China denies any repression in Xinjiang.
