Thai police have revealed that the horrific bombing attack on a Hindu shrine in Bangkok last month that murdered 20 people was masterminded by Chinese Muslims of the Uyghur minority.
The mastermind of the bombing has been named by Thai police as "Izan," and reportedly fled to Bangladesh the day before the bombing on a Chinese passport, reported the Washington Post on Thursday.
Likewise another man who admitted to being part of the group behind the bombing is currently being held by police and has been identified as Yusufu Mierili. He was nabbed on 1 September close to the border with Cambodia in possession of a Chinese passport, which listed him as hailing from the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang in western China near Pakistan.
In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, separatist Sunni Muslim Uyghur factions have conducted numerous attacks, including those with guns and explosives. China has cracked down in response and is trying to have them blacklisted as terrorists, although much of the international community has denounced the Chinese actions, accusing the state of repression.
It appears the clashes in Xinjiang have now become an international problem. Speculation has suggested the bombing in Bangkok was meant as revenge for Thailand deporting over 100 Uyghur Muslims who were in the country illegally back to China in July.
Thailand has been trying to play down the "international terrorism" aspect of the incident, likely so as to avoid damage to the tourism industry that is a mainstay of the Thai economy. Instead the police have claimed the attackers may have been human traffickers smuggling Uyghurs to Turkey.
China has also been hushing up the terror angle -- in an unusual move, given that it has often tried to emphasize Uyghur attacks so as to gain international support for its crackdown as being a part of the general war against terrorism. Apparently, China views the bombing as a security embarrassment it would rather not focus on.
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