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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 answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been unbearable.

But the news her husband Idris shared was even worse. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary acts like attending a place of worship or wearing a headscarf.

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

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and artist, helping to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior detention, which he believed was linked to his work with activists 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 apply for a travel document for the family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her deepest concerns were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she explained. "I realized 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 caring for 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 grown up seeing women having their hijabs ripped off in public by the authorities and had been determined 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 Facebook 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 raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the home and farm. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from going to the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and sent 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 believe in us, we provided you employment and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from college 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 school friends. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go together."

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 men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was unique."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready 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 tongue and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also help the community in exile. "There are many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other nations to yield to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time 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 listed on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.

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

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged to reexamine 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 significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|