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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim community, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The couple had been among many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find refuge in exile, but soon realized they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to publish Uyghur media and publications. 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 stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says 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 dread most: defy China, despite the consequences.

Parental Pressure

Shortly after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they came to see 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 said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some police 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. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in public by the authorities and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family around the house and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from attending the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and sent to jail and told they must have some issue in their brain.

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

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a increasing 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 choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very truthful and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was different."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher 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 finding a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of repression: using China's increasing economic leverage to pressure other countries to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations 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 demonstrated a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

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