The Wife Who Challenged China and Secured Her Husband's Release

In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure 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 contact, when he was preparing to board a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities told him he would be sent back to China. "Reach out to everyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went silent.

Life as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary actions like going to a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find refuge in exile, but quickly realized they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, helping to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed able to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, 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 remain with the children until her husband could request a visa for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "When he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been using 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 claims Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their going back 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 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. 'Don't do 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 grown up seeing women having their head coverings 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have Facebook or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, 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 family around the home and land. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from attending the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some problem in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you employment and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a growing crackdown 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 abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and reserved, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its demands, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his deportation to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to target the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on online platforms. To her amazement, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being pressed to review his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|