In a dimly lit villa somewhere in the Idlib countryside, Choghtal, a slight, soft-spoken man, admitted that, back home, he had never held a gun. At 36, he is the second-in-command of the largest Uyghur militia in Syria. Growing up in Xinjiang, he was close to his par­ents and his sister; leaving them had never occurred to him. Then came the summer of 2009.

That June, a deadly brawl broke out at a toy factory in Guangdong province in southern China. The owners had brought in several hundred Uyghur workers; false rumors soon spread among the factory’s nearly 16,000 Han Chinese workers that the newcomers were ill-mannered, petty thieves, prone to violence—and that several of them had raped two Han women. This ignited a frenzy in which more than 120 people, most of them Uyghurs, were injured. The fighting ended only after two Uyghur men were bludgeoned to death.

In a dimly lit villa somewhere in the Idlib countryside, Choghtal, a slight, soft-spoken man, admitted that, back home, he had never held a gun. At 36, he is the second-in-command of the largest Uyghur militia in Syria. Growing up in Xinjiang, he was close to his par­ents and his sister; leaving them had never occurred to him. Then came the summer of 2009.

Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria’s Civil War, Emily Feng, Columbia Global Reports, 128 pp., $18, October 2026

That June, a deadly brawl broke out at a toy factory in Guangdong province in southern China. The owners had brought in several hundred Uyghur workers; false rumors soon spread among the factory’s nearly 16,000 Han Chinese workers that the newcomers were ill-mannered, petty thieves, prone to violence—and that several of them had raped two Han women. This ignited a frenzy in which more than 120 people, most of them Uyghurs, were injured. The fighting ended only after two Uyghur men were bludgeoned to death.

Uyghur activists wrote open letters to top Chinese lead­ers asking for an investigation and began boycotting Guangdong products in protest, to no avail. On July 5, dozens of young Uyghurs on the opposite side of the country peacefully gathered in a square in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, demanding a thorough state investigation into the deaths. Many Uyghurs felt that decades of systematic marginalization had fostered a lack of accountability whenever their people were concerned.

Police tried to disperse the students, which sparked a Uyghur rampage against police and Han civilians in Urumqi, insti­gating a cycle of violence between both eth­nic groups that lasted for days. The Chinese government said that 192 people were killed—about two-thirds of them Han—with more than 1,000 people injured. Rights groups have cast doubt on the official death toll.

Uyghur organizations say thousands of Uyghurs, mostly young men, were detained by state security forces and disappeared in the aftermath, though an actual fig­ure is unknown. For the next 10 months, regional authorities ramped up surveillance of Uyghurs, fortified checkpoints, and restricted internet access across Xinjiang.

Choghtal watched videos from his friends in Urumqi—of Chinese police crack­ing down on student demonstrators and of Han and Uyghur lynch mobs later prowling the streets—and discovered a well of cold fury inside him. He had seen hundreds of his own people peacefully take to the streets. He had seen people who looked like him try to stand up for themselves, only to be disappeared. If he stayed in Xinjiang, he felt that only prison or an early death awaited him. He began looking for ways to smug­gle himself out of the country.

Four years later, he found his opportunity. Choghtal snuck across the Chinese border and flew to Turkey. He left without telling his family, unable to face his sister’s sorrow. Choghtal vowed to continue his studies in Turkey and become a doctor. With an education, and by building influence among the Uyghur diaspora, perhaps he could help his fellow Uyghurs back........

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