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In July 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. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can assist me," he said, 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 mostly Muslim ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are reported to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace acts like going to a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find security in exile, but soon realized they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco released him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had three children and enjoyed able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a library stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he believed was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape 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 whole family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she said. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

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

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her parents 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 return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I realized there must be some authorities there with them and just pretended like I didn't know anything. But they persisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life 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 public by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"Prior to 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 these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

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 rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives 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 vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', 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 problem in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you employment and this good life 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 knew we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and shy, 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 married and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the community in diaspora. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of repression: using China's increasing financial influence to force other nations to bend to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his deportation to China. She immediately contacted 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 demonstrated a readiness to target the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating 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 release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|