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

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

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact anyone who can help me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary actions like going to a mosque or using a hijab.

The couple had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They believed they would find refuge in exile, but soon found they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," Zeynure said.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous detention, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur culture. He decided to flee 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 family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a terrible decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After 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 said. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure received 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 return to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs ripped off in public by the police and had been determined to live in a country with religious freedom.

"Before 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 truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family 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 cut short by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', 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. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to abandon their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a increasing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children 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 abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to yield to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

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 prevent his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|