🔗 Share this article

In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the news her husband Idris shared was more alarming. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary actions like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find security in exile, but quickly discovered they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, helping to publish Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a visa for the family.

A Terrible Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was finally allowed to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

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

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she stated. "I knew there must be some police there with them and just pretended 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 feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs ripped off in open by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with religious freedom.

"Prior to my husband was arrested in Morocco, I didn't do anything. I was just looking after my family; I didn't even have Facebook or Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and sent to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to abandon their faith and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you jobs and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar language and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at finding a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on online platforms. To her amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being pressed to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|