and subjecting them to unfair trials, and imprisoning thousands for minor activities. However, HT has also been accused of conducting a "brilliant public relations and propaganda campaign" that has framed the fight between HT and Karimov's government as one between a "peaceful" religious group engaged in the "battle of ideas", and a government repressing religion with torture, rather than sometimes brutal attempts by an authoritarian regime to combat a radical ideology and anti-constitutional activities. Xinjiang As of 2008, the emergence of Hizb ut-Tahrir was a "recent phenomenon" in the Mainland Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang. According to Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch, the party's influence was "limited" to southern Xinjiang, but "seems to be growing". One obstacle for the party in Xinjiang is that most Uyghur activists seek sovereignty for Xinjiang rather than union in a caliphate. As in other parts of Central Asia the party has been designated "terrorist" by the government and is banned. South and Southeast Asia Indonesia Hizb ut-Tahrir used to work openly in Indonesia. Indonesia has been called the party's "strongest base", where in August 2007 tens of thousands of people demonstrated in support of the caliphate in the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta. They also held caliphate rallies in many cities across the country, such as in the Gelora 10 November Stadium in Surabaya in 2013. The party was introduced in Indonesia in 1983 by Jordanian-Lebanese man named Abdurrahman al-Baghdadi. As of 2004 it was led by Muhammad Ismail Yusanto. It started as an underground campus movement and as of 2004 remained "largely campus based" with "well-attended rallies and meetings without government restrictions". According to the International Crisis Group HT Indonesia may have ties to violent extremist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, the group responsible for the Bali bombing in October 2002. On 14 January 2016, four assailants staged a bomb and firearm attack in Jakarta where eight people (including the four assailants) died. Indonesian police named a Bahrun Naim, as the principal organizer of the attack. Bahrun was Indonesian but based in Syria with "Islamic State", but before that "studied with Hizbut Tahrir" (both HT and Islamic State in favor of a new caliphate). HT Indonesia spokesman Muhammad Ismail Yusanto stated that Bahrun was expelled from Hizbut Tahrir when it was found out he was "secretly hiding a weapon". On 17 September 2015 the Selangor (Malaysia) Fatwa Committee declared Hizbut Tahrir