🔗 Share this article

In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Contact anyone who can help me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace acts like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find security in their new home, but quickly realized they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," she said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and felt able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "When he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to target dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: defy China, regardless of the risks.

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew there must be some police there with them and just acted like I didn't know anything. But they persisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Don't do anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"Before my husband was arrested in Morocco, I didn't do anything. I was just caring for my family; I didn't even have social media or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and heritage. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer tool of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other countries to yield to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to review his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|