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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been unbearable.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was even worse. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can assist me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary actions like attending a mosque or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find safety in exile, but quickly realized they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government threatened to close all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," she stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and designer, helping to publish Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and felt free to practice as followers of Islam.

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. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior arrest, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "When he was eventually allowed 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 recalled. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Family Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned 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. Perhaps we can assist you,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew there must be some authorities there with them and just pretended 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 bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in public by the authorities 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 rescue my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the animals and poultry. 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 book."

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

China says it is addressing extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. 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 heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you employment and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning 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 classmates. "She knew we both had taken the decision 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 realized 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 marry me, but Idris was unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and ready to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable language and shared ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at finding a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other nations to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being pressed to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop 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|