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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 stressful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been unbearable.

But the information her husband Idris delivered was even worse. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be sent back to China. "Call anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went silent.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace acts like going to a mosque or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find security in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed able to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports 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 flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous decision. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure recalled. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to target dissidents and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Parental Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off 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 chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" Zeynure stated. "I realized there must be some police 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. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open 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 Facebook or Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from attending the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is tackling radicalism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were detained and sent 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 beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from university in Eastern China to a increasing 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 made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also support the community in exile. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the 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 deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a statement saying his deportation was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled 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 significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|