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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been unbearable.

But the update her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace acts like attending a place of worship or using a hijab.

The couple had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find security in exile, but soon realized they were wrong.

"I was told that the Chinese government warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," she explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a translator and artist, helping to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children 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 summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates 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 request a travel document for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," she said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be added on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What followed would lead her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, despite the consequences.

Family Pressure

Soon after hearing 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 came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she stated. "I knew there must be some police there with them and just acted 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 negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have social media or these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance again. The relatives around the house and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. 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 jail and told they must have some issue in their brain.

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

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

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I realized he was very honest 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 unique."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the community in diaspora. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at finding a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats 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 bend to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups 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 demonstrated a readiness to target the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting updates on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the judicial system to determine.

In early 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 ruling he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|