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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Reach out to everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like attending a place of worship or using a headscarf.

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

"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to shut down all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and artist, helping to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had a family of three kids and felt free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally permitted to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Shortly 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 family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe 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 negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had grown up witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the authorities and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or killed. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from attending the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to abandon their faith and heritage. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you employment and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from university in another part of China to a increasing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and shy, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also help the community 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 sense of safety at finding a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to pressure 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 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 advocacy organizations 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 demonstrated a willingness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his deportation was a matter for the judicial system to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert 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 significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|