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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was even worse. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be deported to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like attending a mosque or using a headscarf.

The couple had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in their new home, but soon found they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," she stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed free to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a visa for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for questioning. "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," she recalled. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, despite the consequences.

Family Interference

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "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 life at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in public by the police 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 social media or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood 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 grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the house and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

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

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were detained and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you employment and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from university in Eastern China to a growing crackdown on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had made the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I realized he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. 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 ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the community in exile. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer method of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to prevent his deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed online in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being pressed to review 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 significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|