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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she answered a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was more alarming. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Contact anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim ethnic group, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a million Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like attending a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

The couple had been among many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find refuge in exile, but soon realized they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to close all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco released him," she stated.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, helping to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and enjoyed free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He decided to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a visa for the whole family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was eventually 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," she said. Her deepest concerns were realized when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

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

Family Interference

Soon 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 several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling 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 persisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Don't do anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the softly spoken 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.

"Before my husband was arrested in Morocco, I didn't do anything. I was just looking after my family; I didn't even have Facebook or these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They forced me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the home and farm. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being banned from going to the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their brain.

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

She eventually decided to leave China after coming back home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown 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 decision to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go as a group."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and prepared 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 comparable language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the Uyghur population in diaspora. "There are many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and violence. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of control: using China's increasing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its will, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to silence.

Fighting for Release

After the call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of chance to try to prevent his extradition to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave despite China having already shown 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 online platforms. To her amazement, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a matter for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being pressed to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not stop 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|