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Deradicalization efforts ‘must focus’ on migrant workers
Experts say that efforts to deradicalize migrant workers in Southeast Asia are urgently needed, following last week's arrest of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia and Singapore over possible links to violent extremists.
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Former terrorists, ustadzs and ustadzahs gather at a communications workshop on countering violent extremism organized by Rosyid Nurul Hakiim and Noor Huda Ismail in 2018. (Courtesy of /Rosyid Nurul Hakiim.)
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here is an urgent need for Southeast Asian countries to focus deradicalization efforts on the region’s migrant worker population, which, in recent months, includes those arrested over possible links to terrorist organizations, experts have said.
Malaysia and Singapore made separate announcements last week about the arrest of more than a dozen people – mostly Indonesians – suspected of extremist links.
Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) in Jakarta, pointed to the possibility that migrant workers were being targeted by extremist groups, although she insisted the recent spate of attacks did not reveal new patterns of behavior by terrorist cells.
“Those arrests were not just happening last week. We still don’t know who they are. Some are linked to the Jolo bombing and some probably are migrant workers,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday, noting that the authorities had yet to reveal substantial information.
A dozen Indonesians, three Malaysians and an Indian were detained between July 10 and Sept. 25 in various parts of Malaysia, including Sabah, Selangor, Sarawak, Penang, Pahang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian authorities announced last week.
Malaysian police suspect that some of the suspects had been active on social media in recruiting for the Islamic State movement and spreading jihadi teachings, and some were also believed to be planning to attacks against politicians and non-Muslims in the country.
“The first suspect, an Indonesian man aged 25, was detained in Keningau, Sabah, on July 10. We believe the suspect was helping Indonesian Islamic State militants to smuggle themselves to the southern Philippines via Sabah,” police counterterrorism chief Dept. Comr. Ayob Khan was quoted by The Star as saying on Thursday.
