Prayut says Bangkok bombing possibly related to Uighur smuggling

[DM07]

Another day, another "bulletproof" theory!

[idannyb]

Some good insights via @chinahand (< Twitter handle) on Turkish involvement with Uyghurs and 'fake passports' and the Thailand connection ... This post was authored July 11 (well before Erawan blast). Full post http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2015/07/another-shoe-drops-in-turkish-passports.html

"On the occasion of the forcible repatriation of over one hundred Uyghur men from Thailand to the PRC amid PRC allegations that the Turkish government, in addition to providing diplomatic and consular support to the Uyghurs, had crossed a line by providing fake travel documents:

Please note that the PRC Foreign Ministry, as well as Global Times, were already raising the passport issue at the beginning of 2015. First the PRC employed the polite fiction that some profit-minded freelancers were selling Turkish passports to Uyghurs; then it was “consulates and embassies of unnamed countries” were dishing out documents; now, unambiguously, the PRC is pointed the finger at the Turkish government.

…

The only remaining grey area is whether all the Uyghur men who end up in Syria are simply hapless “cannon fodder” recruited by jihadis, or whether the Turkish security services identify some particularly capable Uyghur militants, provide documents, and enable travel, training, and battlefield experience in Syria in order to cultivate Turkey-friendly assets in Syria or potentially in AfPak/Central Asia. Might never get to the bottom of that one, unless the PRC decides to crank up the evidentiary apparatus another notch in order to make sure Western journos finally get the point.

The PRC is busy fleshing out this story, and added the new wrinkle that the Turkish scheme had facilitated terrorist activities within the PRC.

The PRC has embarked on a major push to justify its insistence on what the West has condemned as the refoulement of Uyghur refugees, to allege that the Uyghurs who left the country were not political refugees protected by the principle of non-refoulement; instead, they were illegal emigrants, candidate militants seeking participation in jihad.

The implications for Turkey are embarrassing, since a central allegation of the PRC’s case is that the Uyghurs it wants back from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. were militants recruited and exfiltrated from the PRC by jihadi networks with the collusion of…

...Turkey…

...with the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates in South Asia…

…and the PRC alleges that some of the refugees were not recruited just to fight against the Assad regime in Syria; they were trained and facilitated to return to the PRC to conduct terror attacks inside China.

That’s a nasty, toxic brew.

The only shoe that hasn’t dropped yet is an open PRC accusation that the passport mischief was organized by the Turkish government in Istanbul, either by its security apparatus as part of its jihadi-related scheming or with knowledge of the government leadership, and not a spontaneous initiative simultaneously kicked off by several Turkish consular offices in South Asia and miraculously complemented by Turkish border police at the airport in Istanbul."

[springheeled jack]

supposition is not the answer to the bombing at the moment there are too many ifs and buts about this case too many indecisions , I personally think this act was carried out by isis it has the hallmarks of this terror group .

[jamesbrock]

Be a man, just admit it that you screwed up by sending back the Uighurs to China.

Well, that decision was questionable for sure, but please be careful about rationalizing terrorism against innocent civilians.

I don't think joining the all-too-obvious dots is rationalising the bombing at all.

There is, in any normal person's opinion, no rationalisation for the indiscriminate murder of innocent people, but one can discuss the possible motives of an act without rationalising the act itself.

[TheKnave]

I would like to speculate that this is a domestic power struggle and the Uighurs are patsies. Human trafficking in Thailand is managed by the military for profit. So they know who the participants are. Uighurs may have been coerced to get involved but factions in the military call the shots and provide the explosive. Some people in the military don't like Prayut. He is now using an armoured car as he knows the silent counter-coup has begun.

This is interesting, and may have some merit.

My only strong feeling against the hypothesis is that targeting innocents is just not the Thai way. Admittedly, this is merely my gut feeling after many years in Thailand, knowing many Thai people, etc. It just doesn't feel right...

OTOH, Prayut's sudden propensity for armored transport has to mean something's up.

Very interesting.

[tigermonkey]

I have listened to the Uyghur in Thailand story time after time , and to be blunt it makes no sense to me -- perhaps someone can explain ?

To begin with, we are presented with roughly 250 “Uyghurs “ who were ‘liberated’ from human trafficking camps in the south of Thailand in 2014 Each member of these groups, which were about 75 % men claimed, Turkish citizenship and that they were trying to get back to Turkey, or failing that to a suitable Muslim country ( e.g. Malaysia). Obviously, many ( or even most) were lying about their origins and citizenship.

The story is already strange. Given that many were proven to originate from Xinjiang in the extreme northeast of China. They then began to claim that they were escaping religious/cultural persecution in Xinjiang, although in the midst of those claims are other facts:

-they claimed marginalization and denial of opportunity in China’s interior provinces, which are far from Xinjiang, and where they could not legally reside (hukou laws);

-12 of them were escaping arrest warrants; and

-2 were prison escapees.

All of the above aside, my first question. Why would Uyghurs, wanting to go to Turkey travel as far in an easterly direction, as would get them to Turkey in a westerly direction ? This trip meant clandestinely travelling across China, illegally entering Laos or Myanmar, and then illegally entering Thailand, all the while travelling through areas which are at least somewhat hostile to Muslims, finally arriving in southern Thailand, twice as far from Turkey as when they started.

Surely a trip through the Stans and across the Caspian, or escape through Pakistan and up the Persian Gulf would be far easier and simpler !

That is the easy question. The unanswerable question is : Why would Turkish citizens (with Uyghur origins), who either hold or are eligible for a valid Turkish passport, have illegally entered Thailand without documents, and then be trying to arrange a clandestine trip back to Turkey ? This makes absolutely no sense, that a person would travel thousands of miles to then place themselves in harms way, by becoming a refugee., but the claims seem to have been credible to Turkey and Thailand. There were about 150 of these who were certified by Turkey to be citizens. I find it impossible to believe these citizenship claims. The Turks were deceived or dishonest, and Thailand went along with it.

Merely a couple of things that have been bothering me. Thanks for reading ! Thoughtful comments are solicited.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tigermonkey

[dageurreotype]

I don't get it. Why would a people smuggling gang draw attention to themselves by committing such a vile act and bring the weight of the worlds law enforcement agencies against them. Surely if there were problems moving people you would just re-think your method of moving them.

Edit. IMO there has to be a better explanation than this one.

I agree, but there's a very good opinion piece in today's BP written by a foreign terrorism expert as to how they could be related. He also sets out a far more plausible scenario surrounding the bombing than any of the codswallop coming out of the 'authorities'.

[dageurreotype]

I don't get it. Why would a people smuggling gang draw attention to themselves by committing such a vile act and bring the weight of the worlds law enforcement agencies against them. Surely if there were problems moving people you would just re-think your method of moving them.

Edit. IMO there has to be a better explanation than this one.

I agree, but there's a very good opinion piece in today's BP written by a foreign terrorism expert as to how they could be related. He also sets out a far more plausible scenario surrounding the bombing than any of the codswallop coming out of the 'authorities'.

[tonbridgebrit]

How about this ?

Okay, a load of Thais have read Thai Visa and they're beginning to accept that nonsense about how Chinese tourists are actually bad for Thailand. So, they went ahead and did something. Instead of making it more difficult for Chinese to get visas for Thailand, they decided to set off a small bomb. Just a small one, where Chinese tourists go, and frighten them Chinese people.

Unfortunately, they made a mistake when making the bomb, and it meant the blast was far more powerful than what it should have been. And right now, none of us know the real reason for the explosion. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. And the Thais who did this, well, there's no way that they're going to come forward and admit this.

[Barin]

I don't believe Uighur people are so violent and revengeful.

Probably they are not related to this attack.

[Jingthing]

I don't believe Uighur people are so violent and revengeful.

Probably they are not related to this attack.

Sarcasm?

[Thai at Heart]

Some good insights via @chinahand (< Twitter handle) on Turkish involvement with Uyghurs and 'fake passports' and the Thailand connection ... This post was authored July 11 (well before Erawan blast). Full post http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2015/07/another-shoe-drops-in-turkish-passports.html

"On the occasion of the forcible repatriation of over one hundred Uyghur men from Thailand to the PRC amid PRC allegations that the Turkish government, in addition to providing diplomatic and consular support to the Uyghurs, had crossed a line by providing fake travel documents:

Please note that the PRC Foreign Ministry, as well as Global Times, were already raising the passport issue at the beginning of 2015. First the PRC employed the polite fiction that some profit-minded freelancers were selling Turkish passports to Uyghurs; then it was “consulates and embassies of unnamed countries” were dishing out documents; now, unambiguously, the PRC is pointed the finger at the Turkish government.

…

The only remaining grey area is whether all the Uyghur men who end up in Syria are simply hapless “cannon fodder” recruited by jihadis, or whether the Turkish security services identify some particularly capable Uyghur militants, provide documents, and enable travel, training, and battlefield experience in Syria in order to cultivate Turkey-friendly assets in Syria or potentially in AfPak/Central Asia. Might never get to the bottom of that one, unless the PRC decides to crank up the evidentiary apparatus another notch in order to make sure Western journos finally get the point.

The PRC is busy fleshing out this story, and added the new wrinkle that the Turkish scheme had facilitated terrorist activities within the PRC.

The PRC has embarked on a major push to justify its insistence on what the West has condemned as the refoulement of Uyghur refugees, to allege that the Uyghurs who left the country were not political refugees protected by the principle of non-refoulement; instead, they were illegal emigrants, candidate militants seeking participation in jihad.

The implications for Turkey are embarrassing, since a central allegation of the PRC’s case is that the Uyghurs it wants back from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. were militants recruited and exfiltrated from the PRC by jihadi networks with the collusion of…

...Turkey…

...with the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates in South Asia…

…and the PRC alleges that some of the refugees were not recruited just to fight against the Assad regime in Syria; they were trained and facilitated to return to the PRC to conduct terror attacks inside China.

That’s a nasty, toxic brew.

The only shoe that hasn’t dropped yet is an open PRC accusation that the passport mischief was organized by the Turkish government in Istanbul, either by its security apparatus as part of its jihadi-related scheming or with knowledge of the government leadership, and not a spontaneous initiative simultaneously kicked off by several Turkish consular offices in South Asia and miraculously complemented by Turkish border police at the airport in Istanbul."

I don't see turkey facilitating adding soldiers to the isis fold. They have their own problems with Kurds. They are a Nato country. They aren't about to knowingly put soldiers into isis. I don't see it.