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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Istanbul when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Contact anyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary actions like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

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

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," she said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and artist, assisting to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and promoting 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 request a travel document for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

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

What followed would lead her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, regardless of the risks.

Family Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she stated. "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. 'Avoid saying anything negative 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 open by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with religious freedom.

"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 reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or killed. They forced me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the sheep and poultry. 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 picture from a story."

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

China says it is tackling extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education 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 abroad 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 culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart 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 school friends. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was unique."

Fresh Start 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 believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a secure location abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and learning 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 reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to target the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing information on online platforms. To her amazement, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out 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 urged to review his case by advocacy organizations. 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|