Four were shot while attempting to flee the country. One was arrested for allegedly planning to blow up a shopping mall. Another lost his leg at a squalid training camp overseas.
In recent weeks, Chinese state newspapers and TV broadcasters have issued a series of reports warning its citizens about the dire consequences of leaving the country to join militant groups in the Middle East, underscoring the government’s growing concerns about an exodus of ethnic Uighurs from the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Hundreds of Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking group that makes up a plurality in the region, have fled China in recent years.