The Wife Who Defied Chinese Authorities and Achieved Her Husband's Release

In July 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 painful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to board a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like going to a mosque or using a headscarf.

The pair had been among many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find security in their new home, but soon discovered they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and designer, helping to publish Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and felt able to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News 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 advocates and promoting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a visa for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was finally allowed 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," she said. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him board the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Shortly after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure got 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 jailed for a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she explained. "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. 'Avoid saying 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 seeing 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused 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 blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals 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 beautiful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from going to the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China says it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were detained and sent to jail and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to abandon their faith and culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you employment and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from college in Eastern China to a increasing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had made 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 saw he was very honest and shy, 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 married and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and shared ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the community in diaspora. "There are many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of repression: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to bend to its demands, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his deportation to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target 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 amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged to reexamine 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 huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|