REUTERS - Sat Jul 11, 2015
BEIJING | By Ben Blanchard
Uighurs from
China's Xinjiang are being given Turkish identity papers in Southeast
Asia by Turkish diplomats and then taken to Turkey where some are sold
to fight for groups like Islamic State as "cannon fodder", a senior
Chinese official said.
Beijing
says the Turkic language-speaking Uighur minority are firstly Chinese
nationals, and those who flee China should be returned to their home
region in the far west of the country bordering central Asia.
"Turkish
embassies in Southeast Asia will give them proof of identity," Tong
Bishan, division chief of the Ministry of Public Security's Criminal
Investigation Department, told a small group of foreign reporters in
Beijing on Saturday.
"They are obviously Chinese but they will give them identities as Turkish nationals."
The
accusation is likely to further anger Ankara, already alarmed by the
return of more than 100 Uighurs to China from Thailand this week.
Some Turks see themselves as sharing a common cultural and religious heritage with their Uighur "brothers".
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