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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she got a long-awaited 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 torturous.

But the information her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Contact anyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Life as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like going to a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

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

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and publications. They had a family of three kids and felt able to practice as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to flee 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 family.

A Terrible Mistake

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "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 trap to me," Zeynure said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps 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 insisted 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 risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up witnessing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the authorities 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 Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. 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 rural areas with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I'd play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The family around the home and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

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

China says it is addressing extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to abandon their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from university in Eastern China to a increasing crackdown on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had made the decision to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

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

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of control: using China's increasing financial influence to force other nations to bend to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol red notice 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 Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being pressed to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|