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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Istanbul when she received a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four stressful 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 delivered was even worse. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Call everyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace actions like attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They hoped they would find security in exile, but quickly realized they were mistaken.

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

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur news and publications. They had three children and enjoyed free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed 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 remain with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received 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 going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" she explained. "I knew there must be some authorities there with them and just acted 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. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in public by the police 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 Twitter. 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 die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The relatives around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a picture from a story."

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

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other nations, 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 in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their mind.

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

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from university in Eastern 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 made the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful 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 wed and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "There are many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at finding a secure location overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of control: using China's growing economic leverage to force other countries to yield to its demands, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a readiness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to review his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent 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|