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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been unbearable.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be extradited to China. "Contact anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Life as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace actions like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find security in their new home, but soon realized they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt free to live 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 pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur culture. He decided to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After 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," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him take the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, despite the risks.

Family Pressure

Soon 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 imprisoned for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she explained. "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 feeding your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in public by the police and had been determined 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 Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or die. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a story."

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

China says it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to prison 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 jobs and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after returning home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had taken 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 realized he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to pressure other nations to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window 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 begged for assistance. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|