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

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more devastating. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities told him he would be sent back to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like going to a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in exile, but quickly discovered they were wrong.

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

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and felt able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a library stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur heritage. 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 whole family.

A Terrible Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him board 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, despite the consequences.

Parental Interference

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

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew there must be some police 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. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings ripped off 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance again. The relatives around the house and land. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays cut short by forced teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from going to the mosque 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 amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and sent to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to abandon their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you employment and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from college in Eastern China to a increasing crackdown on beliefs 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 choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I realized he was very truthful and shy, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "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 die out," she says.

But their relief at finding a secure location abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

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 chance to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other individuals.

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 calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

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