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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been unbearable.

But the information her husband Idris delivered was even worse. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Call anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary acts like attending a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find safety in exile, but soon discovered they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to close all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and designer, helping to publish Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed able to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a library stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates and supporting 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 apply for a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was finally allowed to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Pressure

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure received 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 return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, '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 acted like I didn't know anything. But they persisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the police 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have social media or these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

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 grandparents, 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 relatives around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, 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 observing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you employment and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart 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 school friends. "She knew we both had taken the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

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

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable language and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also help the community in exile. "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 disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other countries to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his extradition 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 pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to go after the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being urged to review 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 huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|