On Writing About Syria’s Uyghur Community As a Chinese-American

All photos by Emily Feng The story began like this: I was moving back to the United States, after having lived abroad for the last ten years, working as a foreign correspondent, and while all my belongings were being shipped across the Pacific Ocean, I offered to help NPR cover developments in Lebanon for a month.

所有照片均由艾米丽·冯拍摄 故事是这样开始的：在国外生活了十年，担任驻外记者后，我要搬回美国，当我所有的物品都被运过太平洋时，我提出帮助 NPR 报道黎巴嫩的事态发展一个月。

Two days after I landed in Beirut, the Assad regime in neighboring Syria fell, and Syria quickly became the bigger story.

我抵达贝鲁特两天后，邻国叙利亚的阿萨德政权倒台，叙利亚很快成为了更大的故事。

While I was reporting on-the-ground in Syria, I noticed the presence of foreign fighters, particularly Central Asian ones.

当我在叙利亚进行实地报道时，我注意到存在外国武装分子，特别是中亚武装分子。

Some of them were clearly Uyghur.

其中一些人显然是维吾尔人。

It took months to contact and negotiate access with them, but last summer, they agreed to do their first-ever on the record media interviews.

与他们联系并协商访问权花了几个月的时间，但去年夏天，他们同意进行首次有记录的媒体采访。

With Uyghur-speaking activist Abduweli Ayup, as well as our Arabic-speaking producer Jawad Rizkallah, I headed to northern Syria.

我与维吾尔语活动人士阿卜杜韦利·阿尤普（Abduweli Ayup）以及我们的阿拉伯语制片人贾瓦德·里兹卡拉（Jawad Rizkallah）一起前往叙利亚北部。

Reporting on the Uyghurs in Syria was a complicated and enormously sensitive task.

报道叙利亚的维吾尔人是一项复杂且极其敏感的任务。

Their existence has been cited by the Chinese Communist Party in its unjust detention and mass arrests of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and ethnic minority groups in China since 2017.

自2017年以来，中国共产党在对中国数十万维吾尔族和少数民族群体进行不公正拘留和大规模逮捕时就提到了他们的存在。

Confirming their existence did not justify such a crackdown.

确认它们的存在并不能证明这种镇压是合理的。

And as I recorded dozens of hours of interviews with the Uyghurs, it became clear that nearly all of the approximately 20,000 men, women, and children in the Syrian community did not start out intending to pick up a gun and become an armed, militant nationalist movement.

当我记录了对维吾尔人的数十个小时的采访时，很明显，叙利亚社区中大约 20,000 名男女和儿童几乎所有一开始都没有打算拿起枪并成为武装的激进民族主义运动。

They described terribly traumatic experiences in China, of physical violence, threat of detention and disappearance, and rampant discrimination, which eventually convinced them they had no future in their homeland.

他们描述了在中国的可怕经历，包括人身暴力、拘留和失踪的威胁以及猖獗的歧视，这些经历最终让他们相信自己在祖国没有未来。

This story I hope gives the Uyghurs and Syrians caught up in conflicts bigger than the ones of their own making some agency and voice.

我希望这个故事能让陷入比他们自己更大的冲突的维吾尔人和叙利亚人发出一些声音。

But the Syrian Uyghurs have a controversial legacy in China and in Syria.

但叙利亚维吾尔人在中国和叙利亚留下了有争议的遗产。

Beijing sees them as extremists and terrorists complicit in fatal attacks against civilians—why?

北京将他们视为对平民发动致命袭击的极端分子和恐怖分子——为什么？

And how could I fact check claims made about Uyghur militants as a whole?

我该如何核实有关维吾尔武装分子整体的说法？

While, in Syria, the Uyghurs scare minority communities and their presence as foreign fighters remains a touchy subject for Syrians.

而在叙利亚，维吾尔人令少数民族社区感到恐惧，他们作为外国武装分子的存在仍然是叙利亚人的敏感话题。

It was therefore more important than ever to interview not just the Uyghurs themselves but also the people they lived and fought alongside in Syria.

因此，不仅要采访维吾尔人本身，还要采访他们在叙利亚生活和并肩作战的人们，这一点比以往任何时候都更加重要。

Then there is the issue of my own identity and how I present to the Uyghurs.

然后是我自己的身份以及我如何向维吾尔人展示的问题。

I am Chinese American and spent nearly eight years living in Beijing.

我是美籍华人，在北京生活了近八年。

I speak fluent Mandarin and look very obviously Chinese.

我普通话很流利，看起来也很中国人。

With Abduweli and Jawad by my side, I could make sure to speak to the Uyghurs in their mother tongue or in the language they now lived and worked in, Levantine Arabic.

有阿卜杜韦里和贾瓦德在我身边，我可以确保用维吾尔人的母语或他们现在生活和工作的语言——黎凡特阿拉伯语与他们交谈。

I was careful at first when meeting Uyghurs not to speak Mandarin; I was sensitive to triggering latent trauma they might associate with the language.

起初，我在与维吾尔人见面时很小心，不要说普通话；我对引发他们可能与语言相关的潜在创伤很敏感。

I even took off the jade bangle I wore at all times and which my mother had given me, a symbol of protection and safety, especially for woman, in Chinese culture, because I didn’t want the Uyghurs to feel uncomfortable by reminders of Chinese culture.

我什至摘下了我一直戴着的玉手镯，这是我母亲送给我的，在中国文化中，玉手镯象征着保护和安全，特别是对女性来说，因为我不想让维吾尔人因为中国文化的提醒而感到不舒服。

I needn’t have worried.

我不必担心。

We were warmly welcomed by the community, which is historically very closed off to outsiders.

我们受到了社区的热烈欢迎，这个社区历来对外人封闭。

And as I was later to find out, in dozens of interviews, that their antipathy and hostility was not towards Chinese people but to the government of China.

后来我在数十次采访中发现，他们的反感和敌意不是针对中国人民，而是针对中国政府。

Some Uyghurs were eager to speak Mandarin with me, a language they had spoken fluently in Xinjiang but no longer had the chance to practice in Syria.

一些维吾尔人渴望和我说普通话，他们在新疆可以说流利的语言，但在叙利亚就没有机会练习了。

Frankly, harder to deal with were the living conditions in Idlib, the city in northern Syria around which most Uyghurs live.

坦率地说，更难应对的是伊德利卜的生活条件，这座位于叙利亚北部的城市是大多数维吾尔人居住的地方。

More than 13 years of war left much of the city in a dilapidated state and destroyed critical infrastructure.

超过 13 年的战争使这座城市的大部分地区变得破败不堪，重要的基础设施被毁。

There were no functioning hotels, and I ended up leasing a furnished apartment for a month with a diesel-fueled water heater that belched black smoke but no showerhead, meaning I took bucket baths for a month.

没有正常营业的酒店，我最终租了一套带家具的公寓一个月，配有柴油热水器，冒着黑烟，但没有淋浴喷头，这意味着我洗了一个月的桶浴。

The discomfort was worth it, however.

不过，这种不适是值得的。

I ended up logging hundreds of hours of tape with the Uyghurs and with local Syrians, who offered multi-faceted and unvarnished views of their new foreign neighbors.

我最终与维吾尔人和当地叙利亚人录制了数百小时的录音，他们对他们的新外国邻居提供了多方面的、不加修饰的看法。

Eating Uyghur-style naan bread and mutton-fat samsas in northern Syria, I could have closed my eyes and imagined myself back in Xinjiang, a decade before.

在叙利亚北部吃着维吾尔风味的馕饼和羊脂萨萨，我闭上眼睛就能想象自己回到了十年前的新疆。

Who could have imagined my years in China would have led me to this dry patch of hilly, Syria?

谁能想到我在中国的岁月会带我来到叙利亚这片干燥的丘陵地带？

The reporting raised bigger questions than I had anticipated when I began trip planning.

该报道提出的问题比我开始旅行计划时预想的还要大。

What would happen to the Uyghurs now that the war was over?

战争结束后，维吾尔人会怎样？

Many were putting down real roots: buying land, building houses, enrolling their children in Syrian schools.

许多人真正扎根：购买土地、建造房屋、让孩子进入叙利亚学校。

And yet their stated dream remained fighting their way back to China, a prospect in many ways even more implausible than when the Uyghurs first moved to Syria.

然而，他们所宣称的梦想仍在奋力返回中国，从很多方面来说，这一前景比维吾尔人第一次移居叙利亚时更加令人难以置信。

It remains taboo to discuss permanent settlement in Syria.

讨论叙利亚的永久解决方案仍然是禁忌。

The other question I was left contemplating is the perverse power of trauma.

我思考的另一个问题是创伤的反常力量。

One father observed the difference he saw in his Syrian-born Uyghur children and his children who had been born in China.

一位父亲观察到他在叙利亚出生的维吾尔族孩子和在中国出生的孩子之间的差异。

The former were much calmer and extroverted than his Chinese-born children, having experienced far less state control and ethnic discrimination, he surmised.

他推测，前者比他在中国出生的孩子要冷静和外向，经历的国家控制和种族歧视要少得多。

Yet, predictably, the cause of Uyghur independence from China also burned less bright for his Syrian-born children, who had never laid eyes on Xinjiang.

然而，可以预见的是，维吾尔人从中国独立的事业对于他在叙利亚出生的孩子们来说也没有那么光明，因为他们从未见过新疆。

The Uyghurs’ shared suffering and their painful memories of home created an enormous sense of unity that let them survive a punishing war but transmitting that collective sense of tragedy to the next generation of Syrian Uyghurs will grow increasingly challenging.

维吾尔人共同遭受的苦难和对家乡的痛苦记忆创造了一种巨大的团结感，使他们能够在一场残酷的战争中幸存下来，但将这种集体悲剧感传递给下一代叙利亚维吾尔人将变得越来越具有挑战性。

The time I spent in Syria became an integral part of my book, Our Hearts Burned for Home .

我在叙利亚度过的时光成为我的书《我们的心为家燃烧》不可分割的一部分。

I hope that readers of this book remember the winding, unexpected path the Uyghurs I wrote about took to get to Syria.

我希望本书的读者记住我所写的维吾尔人到达叙利亚所经历的蜿蜒、意想不到的道路。

Their story is one with few, if any, uncomplicated “good guys.” I am not asking readers to take sides but merely to empathize: trauma and war have a terrible way of forcing individuals to choose between bad and worse options.

他们的故事里几乎没有（如果有的话）简单的“好人”。我并不是要求读者选边站队，而只是表示同情：创伤和战争以一种可怕的方式迫使个人在糟糕和更糟糕的选择之间做出选择。

This story I hope gives the Uyghurs and Syrians caught up in conflicts bigger than the ones of their own making some agency and voice.

我希望这个故事能让陷入比他们自己更大的冲突的维吾尔人和叙利亚人发出一些声音。

Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria’s Civil War by Emily Feng is available from Columbia Global Reports.

《我们的心为家燃烧：叙利亚内战中的维吾尔武装分子》作者艾米丽·冯 (Emily Feng)，可从哥伦比亚全球报道获取。