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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris delivered was more devastating. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can help me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace actions like going to a place of worship or using a hijab.

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

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," Zeynure explained.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, helping to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had a family of three kids and felt free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur culture. 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 family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally allowed to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him take the flight knowing 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 Interference

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

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she explained. "I knew there must be some police 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 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 stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs ripped off in open 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 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 sent to China will be abused or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type 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 Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from going to the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt able to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and sent to jail and told they must have some problem in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion 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 coming back home from college 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 classmates. "She was aware we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and ready 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 similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a secure location abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of control: using China's growing financial influence to pressure other nations to yield to its demands, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed online in Europe 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 demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting information on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being urged to review his case by human rights groups. 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|