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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

But the update her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities told him he would be extradited to China. "Call everyone who can help me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Existence as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur community, which makes up about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the past decade, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in so-called "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for ordinary actions like attending a place of worship or using a headscarf.

The pair had been among thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They believed they would find security in their new home, but soon realized they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government threatened 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 translator and artist, assisting to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had a family of three kids and felt able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a library stocking Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He decided 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 family.

A Costly Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a terrible mistake. At the airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "After he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how relieved he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to target dissidents and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him board the flight aware he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Soon after hearing of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got 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 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 stated. "I knew there must be some police 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 caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had grown up witnessing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the police and had been resolved 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 truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were farmers. "I used to play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The relatives around the home and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a story."

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

China says it is tackling radicalism 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 free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some problem in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to abandon their faith and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you employment and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from university in Eastern China to a growing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful 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 60 days they were married and prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and shared background. "It felt like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the community in diaspora. "There are many kids now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents living in exile through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other nations to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone 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 right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a readiness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew 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 sent back to China. Zeynure says there was significant political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|