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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four painful 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 told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be deported to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like going to a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They believed they would find safety in their new home, but quickly discovered they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to close all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and felt free to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally 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 recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, despite the consequences.

Parental Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" Zeynure stated. "I knew 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. '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 risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I'd play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by forced teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China says it is tackling extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

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

She finally decided to depart China after returning home from university in Eastern China to a increasing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I realized 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 unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to bend to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations 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 shown a willingness to go after the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing information on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice 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 diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|