The Woman Who Stood Up to Chinese Authorities and Won Her Spouse's Freedom

In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been unbearable.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more devastating. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Call anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Life as Uyghurs in Turkey

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 north-western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace acts like going to a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The pair had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They believed they would find security in their new home, but soon found they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to close all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed able to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. 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 whole family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, despite the consequences.

Parental Interference

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her parents 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 return to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she explained. "I realized 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken 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 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 reveal the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They forced me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections 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 poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China says it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some problem in their brain.

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

She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a growing crackdown on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and shared ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their relief at finding a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of control: using China's growing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave 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 sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|