Our requests for assistance may not always find sympathetic ears. But it must be made very clear that this is not only about Chinese national security. It is also about religious extremism, the dangerous, immediate prelude to acts of terror.

Double standards in the fight against terror and acquiescence in religious extremism do no good to any party. Instead, they brew a universal threat to all.

The Uygur militants seeking to join the ranks of foreign jihadists have proven themselves a dangerous crowd.

The terrorist attack in Kunming in March last year, which left 29 dead and 143 injured, was the terrorists' Plan B, an "on-the-spot jihad", after their plan to flee the country was frustrated.

The following month, two Vietnamese officers, at a checkpoint on the China-Vietnam border, were killed in an improvised "jihad" when Vietnamese officers were about to repatriate 16 Chinese nationals, all ethnic Uygurs from Xinjiang who had illicitly entered their country.

Wherever such people end up, they bring with them the evil seeds of terror. That is why any country that shelters them will regret it sooner or later.