🔗 Share this article

In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she received a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been unbearable.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be sent back to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like attending a place of worship or using a hijab.

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

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government warned to close all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had a family of three kids and felt free to practice as followers of Islam.

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

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "When he was finally allowed to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," she said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the international 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 claims Turkish officials allowed him take the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, regardless of the consequences.

Family Interference

Shortly after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" Zeynure 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. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the authorities and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance 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 school holidays cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

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

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave 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 school friends. "She was aware we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and shy, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men 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 leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

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

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

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