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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she received a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four stressful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the information her husband Idris shared was even worse. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be sent back to China. "Call everyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace acts like attending a place of worship or using a hijab.

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

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt able to practice as followers of Islam.

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 pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided 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 Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was eventually permitted 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 taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned 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. Perhaps we can help you,'" Zeynure stated. "I knew there must be some police 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. 'Don't do anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the police 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 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 tortured or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to 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 beautiful, 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 mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you jobs and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from university in Eastern China to a growing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and reserved, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were married and prepared to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of control: using China's growing economic leverage to force other countries to bend to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

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 deportation to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a willingness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a announcement saying his extradition was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged 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 diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|