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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris shared was more alarming. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Contact anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like attending a mosque or using a headscarf.

The couple had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find refuge in their new home, but soon found they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government threatened to close all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure explained.

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

But when one of Idris's best 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 urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, 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 disastrous decision. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally allowed to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, 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 "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials allowed him take the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

What followed would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, despite the risks.

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received 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 a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I realized there must be some police 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken 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.

"Before 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 reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from attending the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People 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 religion and heritage. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from university in another part of China to a increasing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest 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."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and prepared to move 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 ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also help the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture 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 prominent force in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a newer tool of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue 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 pressed to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|