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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Istanbul when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was more devastating. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Contact everyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like going to a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find security in their new home, but soon found they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and artist, assisting 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 library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "When he was finally allowed 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 said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

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

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, despite the risks.

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" Zeynure explained. "I realized there must be some authorities 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. 'Don't do anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had grown up seeing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the police and had been resolved 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 Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or killed. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a story."

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

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, 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 in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to prison and told they must have some problem in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had made the decision to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I saw 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 wed me, but Idris was unique."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of repression: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to bend to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the family members of other targets.

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

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being pressed to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|