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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He told her that upon landing 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 said, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace acts like going to a mosque or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find security in exile, but soon discovered they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she stated.

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

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the whole family.

A Terrible Mistake

Departing Turkey proved to be a terrible decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was eventually allowed to get on 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 confirmed when he was taken off 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 requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed 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 risks.

Parental Interference

Shortly after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received 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 disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some police 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. 'Don't do anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything negative 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 hijabs forcibly removed in public 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 caring for my family; I didn't even have social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by forced teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from attending the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to abandon their faith and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you employment and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a growing crackdown 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 overseas 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 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."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the community in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their relief at finding a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of control: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other countries to yield to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed on the internet in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to go after 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 compelled to issue a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts 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 ruling he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|