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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her residence in Turkey's largest city when she answered a long-awaited phone call from her husband. It had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more devastating. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Contact anyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are members of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like attending a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find security in their new home, but quickly found they were wrong.

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

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and felt free to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He decided to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a visa for the whole family.

A Terrible Mistake

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was finally permitted to get on 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 deepest concerns were confirmed 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 target political refugees and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure says 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 fear most: challenge China, despite the risks.

Parental Interference

Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives 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 warning. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" Zeynure explained. "I realized 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. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their head coverings ripped off in open by the police and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

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 elders, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The family around the home and land. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a book."

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

China says it is tackling extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their mind.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you employment and this beautiful life here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to leave China after returning home from college in another part of China to a increasing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything wrong. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already residing there, with a similar language and common ethnicity. "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 being raised without Uyghur culture or language 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 short-lived. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to force other nations to yield to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to stop his deportation to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave 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 social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

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