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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four stressful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be deported to China. "Call anyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like going to a mosque or using a hijab.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find safety in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and artist, assisting to publish Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided 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 Costly Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target dissidents and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him board the flight aware 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 consequences.

Family Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off 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 disturbing message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she explained. "I knew there must be some authorities there with them and just acted 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. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in open 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 caring for 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 reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, 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 land. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their faith and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you jobs and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from college 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 made the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was unique."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and shared 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 kids 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 global leader in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of control: using China's growing financial influence to force other countries to bend to its will, 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 limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a announcement saying his extradition was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

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