🔗 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 unbearable.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Life as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like going to a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The couple had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find safety in exile, but soon discovered they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco freed him," she said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed able to live as Muslims.

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 panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous detention, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and promoting Uyghur culture. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" she stated. "I realized 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 feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up witnessing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the authorities and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"Before 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 these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance again. The relatives around the house 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 observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained 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 provided you employment and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a increasing repression 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 made the decision to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to pressure other countries to bend to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing information on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine 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|