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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris shared was more alarming. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Reach out to anyone who can help me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like going to a place of worship or wearing a headscarf.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find safety in their new home, but soon realized they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government warned to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur media and publications. They had a family of three kids and felt free to practice as Muslims.

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 pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually allowed to board 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 deepest concerns were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What followed would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: defy China, despite the consequences.

Family Pressure

Shortly after hearing of her husband's arrest, 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 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,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some authorities there with them and just acted 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 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 grown up seeing women having their head coverings ripped off in public by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"Before 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 these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent 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 early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."

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

China says it is tackling extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some problem 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 living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a increasing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

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

Fresh Start 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 residing there, with a comparable language and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up 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 secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other nations to bend to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to prevent his deportation to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing information on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged 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|