In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been unbearable.
But the update her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Call anyone who can assist me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.
The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace acts like going to a mosque or wearing a hijab.
The pair had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find refuge in exile, but quickly discovered they were wrong.
"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," she said.
After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt able to live as Muslims.
But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the whole family.
Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.
Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.
What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, regardless of the consequences.
Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives 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 message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew there must be some authorities 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. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"
But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up seeing 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 social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or killed. They forced me to speak out."
Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance again. The family around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."
The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.
China says it is tackling extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice 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 brain.
"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you employment and this good life here'," says Zeynure.
She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from university in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had made the choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could meet and go together."
Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was unique."
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 Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many kids now in China growing up 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 secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer method of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other countries to yield to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.
After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.
Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to decide.
In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being pressed to review 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 significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|
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