Armed Uyghur Rebels Overthrow Regime in Syria
07:30 Share

About three months ago, you know as our viewers know rebel groups in Syria basically overthrew the dictator Bashar al-Assad and There are lots of rebel groups that were working to overthrow him but among them You're you're telling me we're Uighurs. Yeah, so like What's going on with that? So let's go back to the Thailand issue the

Through Thailand or through Southeast Asia, there was a big migration about 12 years ago now, 12, 13 years ago. They made their way through Southeast Asia and tens of thousands of Uyghurs made their way to Southeast Asia, eventually got to Turkey, and then a group of those got into Syria.

So the ones that we've been talking about very recently, the 48, 53 of them were left. Five of them died in Thai detention, three adults and two children. And the 48 are left now.

So a big group of them made their way into Syria as well. They joined various groups. And this group that we're talking about now that's helped with the revolution, the Turkestan Islamic Party, which was initially labeled as a terrorist organization by the United States. But back in 2020, Mike Pompeo took them off the terror list. And so this group have been living in Idlib. They have their own

Right now, their numbers seem to be anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 people. So children, they have their own businesses. Apparently, there are 20 or 30 schools there now. And so this group joined other groups, and they helped or aided in the fall of Bashar al-Assad. And apparently, among the foreign fighters, they are the biggest foreign legion there. Yeah.

you know, who helped them, what goes on behind closed doors. I'm not going to go into the government dealings, but the Western media picked it up saying, because in their propaganda videos, they were saying that China is next. But we've recently come to see that most of that foreign legion

And all the Uyghurs there now have seemed to attain Syrian citizenship now, and now they've become part of Syria's national army. And so whether or not...

China is going to approach the Syrian government and ask for them back is what we will see in the future. But it looks like for now, and speaking to the Uyghurs on the ground, they're quite confident that the Syrian government won't sell them out. But time will tell. But as far as we can see, they seem to be living good lives. I recently interviewed a

an Uyghur anthropologist that visited the region, and he was quite amazed of the thriving society that got up in Idlib. Right. But I mean, you know, you have a group of armed Uyghur Muslims who work to overthrow a dictator. That, from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party, must be terrifying, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It should be terrifying. But right now, as far as we can see, they do not have the capacity to do anything. They have not done anything. Whilst China has attributed quote-unquote terrorist attacks to this group, they themselves have not claimed any of these attacks. To be honest, no...

rebel group or no Uyghur fighting, Mujahideen, whatever you want to call them, have actually fired any bullets into China from the outside or anything at all, despite what China says. Are you concerned that the US or other Western governments might look at this and think that, oh yeah, maybe Uyghurs do have the capacity to be terrorists? That seems like a stretch. Yeah, well,

In my mind, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. As Uyghurs, we consider ourselves to be occupied. And so under international law, Uyghurs would have the right to defend themselves and kick out their occupiers. That's the way I see it. And that's the way a lot of Uyghurs see it as well. And so, yes, we may be considered by China to be terrorists, but we consider any act, you know,

targeting China's occupying forces, their security apparatus, these types of things in a way of liberating one's own nation. Yeah.

So I have a question sort of about the future of Xinjiang. And this is, you know, we had a Tibetan congresswoman in exile on our show a while back, and we asked her a similar question. So my question is about, like, what do you see as the future of Xinjiang if Uyghur activists sort of, the ones that you work with sort of have

are able to achieve their goals. What would that look like? So I can't speak from an organizational perspective, because from an organizational perspective, we want basically basic human rights for Uyghurs, no matter who they live under.

But as an Uyghur, and what Uyghurs want and what Uyghur activists want is to be free of China. We don't want China occupying us. We don't want China oppressing us. We should be able to rule and govern ourselves. But practically, militarily, power-wise, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

The way I see it is that the work that I do hopefully is a platform for the next generation to come and so that they can build off that and then do something more to kick out our occupiers, basically. But China uses that as an excuse. As I mentioned, with that foreign legion in Syria,

perhaps there's about 2,000 or 3,000 fighters altogether. That is not a justification to be locking up millions of people at all. I don't see this happening in any other country. You know, to Syria, thousands of people all around the world, even Americans, Australians, Canadians, Europeans went to Syria to fight. I did not see any of those governments lock up 10% of their Muslim population into concentration camps.

Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this highlight from our podcast. But there's a lot more. The full hour-long show is available on our website, ChinaUncensored.tv. And when you subscribe, you'll also get premium China Uncensored episodes, live streams, and a community chat with me, Shelley, and Matt, and hundreds of subscribers. And most importantly, you'll be supporting content you love. Check it out. The link is below.