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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more alarming. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be sent back to China. "Contact anyone who can assist me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the mostly Muslim community, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary actions like going to a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find security in their new home, but quickly found they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to close all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco released him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and artist, helping to publish Uyghur news 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 library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He decided 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 family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After 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 set-up to me," Zeynure recalled. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What followed would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, regardless of the risks.

Parental Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" Zeynure stated. "I realized there must be some authorities 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. '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 remain silent. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs 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 these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays cut short by mandatory teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and sent to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion 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 university in another part of China to a growing 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 abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very truthful and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was unique."

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 believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and common ethnicity. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and designer, they could also help the community in diaspora. "We have many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to pressure other nations to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed on the internet in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being pressed 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 political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|