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

But the update her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be sent back to China. "Contact everyone who can assist me," he said, before the line went silent.

Life as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like attending a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in exile, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to close all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco freed him," she said.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had a family of three kids and felt free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a library stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with advocates and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Mistake

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target dissidents and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected 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 several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist 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. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with religious freedom.

"Prior to 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 reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They forced me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "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 land. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

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

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

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

She finally decided to depart China after returning home from college 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 school friends. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and reserved, and couldn't be dishonest 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 two months they were married and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting critics abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a newer tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other nations to yield to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|