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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she received a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been unbearable.

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 jailed. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Reach out to everyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like attending a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find safety in their new home, but soon found they were mistaken.

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

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed free to practice as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Parental Pressure

Soon after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an unexpected 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 imprisoned for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she 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. 'Don't do 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 stay quiet. She had grown up witnessing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the police and had been determined 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 rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years 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 animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and land. 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 prohibited from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their faith and heritage. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from college in Eastern 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 made the decision to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and shy, 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 ready to move 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 tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator 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 responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other nations to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing updates on social media. To her surprise, similar protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|