The Wife Who Challenged China and Won Her Spouse's Liberty

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

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

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary actions like going to a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find safety in exile, but soon realized they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to close all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris began as a interpreter and artist, assisting to produce Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and felt free to practice 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 became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

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

What followed would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Pressure

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

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some authorities there with them and just pretended like I didn't know anything. But they insisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs ripped off in public by the authorities and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, 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 relatives 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 "communist songs" and being prohibited from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you employment and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart China after returning 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 was aware we both had taken the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

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

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and shared ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the community in exile. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other nations to yield to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert 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 online in the EU and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not stop 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|