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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was preparing to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been unbearable.

But the information her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be extradited to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur ethnic group, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace acts like going to a place of worship or wearing a headscarf.

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

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco released him," she said.

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

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

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the airport, border control officials took Idris 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 set-up to me," she said. Her worst fears were realized when he was taken off the plane and arrested by border officials.

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

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

Parental Pressure

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

Her parents had a chilling message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she explained. "I knew there must be some authorities 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. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs ripped off in public by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with religious freedom.

"Before 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 international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of chance 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 prohibited from attending the mosque or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow 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 wanted Uyghur people to abandon their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to depart China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown 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 choice to go overseas and told us maybe 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 be dishonest or do anything wrong. 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 married and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," 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 dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their relief at finding a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent method of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other countries to yield to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice hanging over 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 advocacy organizations as she could find listed on the internet in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being pressed to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|