In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.
But the news her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.
Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur community, which makes up about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like going to a mosque or using a headscarf.
The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.
"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure explained.
After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, helping to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed free to live as Muslims.
But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and promoting 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 visa for the whole family.
Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure recalled. Her deepest concerns were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.
Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight knowing he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.
What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, despite the consequences.
Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for a few months upon their going back to China.
Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe 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 insisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"
But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with religious freedom.
"Before 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 reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They pushed me to speak out."
Zeynure has two distinct 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 animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The relatives around the house and land. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a story."
The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays cut short by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.
China says it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some problem in their mind.
"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.
She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from university in another part of 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 taken the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go together."
Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful 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 unique."
Within 60 days they were married and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our responsibility 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 living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to force other countries to bend to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.
After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the relatives of other individuals.
Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on online platforms. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to determine.
In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged to review his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|
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