The Activist Who Stood Up to China and Achieved Her Husband's Release

In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris shared 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 anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

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

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, helping to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed able to practice as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur heritage. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was finally permitted to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

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

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: defy China, regardless of the risks.

Parental Interference

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

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she explained. "I realized there must be some authorities 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. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the softly spoken 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 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 killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and land. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They aimed for 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 university in Eastern China to a increasing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured 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 wed me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are 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 locating a place of safety overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to pressure other countries to yield to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Release

After the phone 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 stop his deportation to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on online platforms. To her amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|