The Wife Who Stood Up to Chinese Authorities and Secured Her Husband's Liberty

In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Call anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary actions like attending a place of worship or using a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find security in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris began as a interpreter and artist, helping to publish Uyghur news and publications. They had three children and enjoyed free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Costly Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous 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 happy 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 Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to target dissidents 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 arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Shortly after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some police there with them and just acted like I didn't know anything. But they insisted 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 safety at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had grown up witnessing women having their hijabs ripped off in public 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 rescue my husband – I had to tell the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or die. They pushed 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 used to play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a scene 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 observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some problem in their mind.

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

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from university in Eastern 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 knew we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very honest 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 unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions 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 place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue 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 human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|