Wary police say no serious IS militant threat in region yet

However, there have been no indications linking IS ideology with the Rohingya or Uighur people who travel frequently, either lawfully or through illegal migration, throughout the Southeast Asian or nearby region.

The IS issue has become an issue of concern for Asean authorities, given their extremist activities that have earned support and sympathy from foreign Muslims worldwide.

Australian police, on September 15, arrested 15 people on suspicion they were associated with IS after the government raised its terror warning to a critical level. In a series of simultaneous raids by 800 officers, the police pre-emptively acted to prevent possible acts of terror including intercepted threats to kidnap and publicly behead Australian citizens on their home ground.

Muslim citizens of Asean countries have openly taken part in the IS fighting, in parts of Syria and Iraq, by volunteering as fighters allied to the militants. The New Straits Times in Malaysia reported a former member of the PAS Party had died from wounds sustained during a fight on September 9.

Indonesia-based the Jakarta Globe reported recently the arrest of four foreign men using fake Turkey passports in Poso and three others in Depok, on grounds they were suspected members of terror group Santoso.

Indonesian police said later the first four spoke the Uighur language and entered Cambodia illegally via Thailand. They later travelled to Malaysia, using fake passports forged and obtained in Thailand, and later to Indonesia, before being arrested by a special operations police unit Detachment 88.

However, there are conflicting details about these four men, that they might merely have wanted to leave China’s Xinjiang to escape persecution as a minority people. The wealth of the detainees, especially those found in Thailand in March, resulted in the Uighurs being deemed as secessionists, some of whom, authorities say, attacked non-Muslim Chinese.

News reports say Singapore repatriated a Uighur who entered the country from Thailand using a fake passport obtained in Bangkok.

In Thailand, a senior immigration policeman, Pol Major-General Thatchai Pitaneelabutr, said there was little progress in the case of 229 people of unknown nationality found in Songkhla in March – whether they were Chinese nationals of Uighur minority, or the Turkish nationals they claimed to be. The 229 people, including women and children, remained under immigration custody, and could not be repatriated until their nationalities or countries of origin were known.

Thatchai said he had not received a request for help from Indonesian police to trace the travel route, reportedly from Thailand, of the four Uighur men.

He said most fake passports used by people with known connections to the insurgency in the far South had been made in other countries.