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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been unbearable.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can rescue me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find safety in their new home, but quickly found they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and artist, assisting to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and felt free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with activists and promoting 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 request a visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a terrible decision. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was finally allowed 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," she said. Her deepest concerns were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

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 claims Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected 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 return to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in public 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 caring for my family; I didn't even have social media or these platforms. 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 abused or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to 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 beautiful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from going to the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were detained and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their mind.

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

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had made the decision to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and reserved, 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 60 days they were wed and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the community in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other countries to bend to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

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