One of the main justifications that the Chinese Communist Party uses to justify its repression of the Uyghur people is the supposed existence of armed separatists. The CCP says that there are violent, militant Uyghurs who are behind the terrorist attacks that have wracked Chinese cities both inside and outside of Xinjiang, and who are aligned with radical Islamists in the Middle East more broadly.
In the murky, messy world of the Middle East after the Arab Spring, these claims have always been hard to verify. But in 2024, when the NPR journalist Emily Feng was despatched to Syria, she came across a regiment of Uyghur fighters, who had actually helped Ahmed al-Sharaa fight his way to Damascus, where he later became the President of Syria.
Her latest book, Our Hearts Burned for Home, is the result of her weeks of being embedded into this Syrian Uyghur community. It is the first time that the nuanced and complex story of these Uyghur militants have been told. Theirs is a story where, I think, there are no easy heroes and villains, and that’s what makes this such valuable reporting. I’m delighted to say that Emily joins this episode.
We talk about how people born and bred in China found themselves fighting on the front line of another country’s civil war, the conservative interpretation of Islamic life that many Syrian Uyghurs favour, and what, now, happens to this community of some 20,000 men, women and even children, now that the Assad regime has fallen.
Chinese Whispers with Cindy Yu is listener-supported.
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