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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the information her husband Idris delivered was more alarming. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and imprisoned. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Reach out to anyone who can assist me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for ordinary acts like going to a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The pair had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and promoting 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 Mistake

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was finally allowed to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the global 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 allowed him board the flight aware he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

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

Family Interference

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" Zeynure stated. "I knew 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. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had grown up seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the authorities 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 Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside 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 scene from a book."

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

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They aimed for 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 finally decided to leave China after coming back home from university 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 classmates. "She knew we both had taken the choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and shy, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything bad. 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 wed and prepared to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language 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 targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other countries to bend to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his deportation to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed on the internet 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 targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being pressed to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|