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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she got 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 Morocco. The silence had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more devastating. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities stated he would be extradited to China. "Contact everyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the population in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace acts like attending a mosque or using a hijab.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find refuge in their new home, but quickly discovered they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she said.

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

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he suspected 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 apply for a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Mistake

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was finally allowed to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would lead her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her parents 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 disturbing message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure stated. "I knew 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. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs 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 Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. 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 rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the house and land. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from going to the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. 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 wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had made the decision to go overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the community in diaspora. "There are many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions 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 overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics living in exile 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 financial influence to pressure other countries to yield to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled 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 extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|