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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Istanbul when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been difficult.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be extradited to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went silent.

Life as Uyghurs in Turkey

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like going to a mosque or using a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They believed they would find refuge in their new home, but soon discovered they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. 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 visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was eventually allowed to board 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 deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight knowing he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she explained. "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. 'Avoid doing 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 softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. 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 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 social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays cut short by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent 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 gave you jobs and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally 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 made the choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. 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 prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other countries to bend to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing updates on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to decide.

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