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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she received a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Reach out to anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary actions like attending a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The couple had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find refuge in exile, but soon discovered they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure explained.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and artist, helping to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and felt able to practice as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News 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 activists and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a visa for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "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 set-up to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, regardless of the risks.

Family Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, 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 return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some authorities 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up witnessing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the police and had been resolved 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 Facebook or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were farmers. "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 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 cut short by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

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

She eventually decided to depart China after returning home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and reserved, 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 move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar language and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also help the community in diaspora. "There are many kids 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 sense of safety at finding a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

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