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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the information her husband Idris shared was even worse. He explained that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be sent back to China. "Reach out to anyone who can assist me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in alleged "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 believed they would find security in exile, but soon found they were wrong.

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

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, assisting to produce 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 library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he believed was linked to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the whole family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to get on the plane, he told me how happy 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 utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What followed would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: defy China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected 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 a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she explained. "I realized 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. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in open by the authorities and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 sent to China will be abused 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 opportunity again. The relatives around the home and land. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

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

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

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

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from university in another part of China to a growing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had made the choice to go abroad and told us maybe we could get together and go together."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable tongue and common ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the community in exile. "We have many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other nations to yield to its will, including arresting and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone 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 immediately reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to target the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing information on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out 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 huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|