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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home 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 take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been unbearable.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more devastating. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be deported to China. "Reach out to everyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace actions like going to a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find safety in their new home, but soon realized they were mistaken.

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

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, assisting to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed able to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally allowed to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

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

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

Family Pressure

Shortly 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 relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for a few months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" Zeynure stated. "I realized there must be some authorities 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in public by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with religious freedom.

"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 Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or die. They forced me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals 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 story."

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

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

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

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had made the choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, 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."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and prepared to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also help the community in diaspora. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure other nations to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for assistance. 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 updates on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's red notice after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|