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In the summer of 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Istanbul when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There 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 shared was more devastating. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can rescue me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, 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 attending a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find safety in their new home, but quickly discovered they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure became an English teacher, while Idris began as a translator and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt able to practice as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with advocates 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 apply for a visa for the family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was finally permitted to get on the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," Zeynure recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "alert list." Zeynure claims Turkish officials let him take the flight knowing he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What followed would lead her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Interference

Shortly after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they visited 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,'" Zeynure explained. "I knew there must be some police there with them and just pretended 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 bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised witnessing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open 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 caring for my family; I didn't even have Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be abused or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the home and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from going to the religious site or practicing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

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

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from college in Eastern 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 knew we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us maybe we could meet and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful 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."

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the community in exile. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's growing financial influence to force other countries to yield to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol red notice against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and sharing information on social media. To her amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being urged to reexamine his case by human rights groups. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|