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In the summer of 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 contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Call anyone 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 community, which makes up about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are reported to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like going to a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find refuge in exile, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government warned to close all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure said.

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

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he believed was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a visa for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," she said. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed 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.

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her family since they visited her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned 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,'" she stated. "I realized 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. 'Don't do 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 been raised seeing 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 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 tell the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were farmers. "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 story."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to abandon their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we gave you jobs and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had made the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could meet and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away reassured by Idris. "I saw 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 marry me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children 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 secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of control: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other countries to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing information on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to determine.

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