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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the news her husband Idris revealed was even worse. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Call everyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

The wife, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace acts like attending a mosque or wearing a headscarf.

The pair had been among thousands of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find refuge in exile, but soon discovered they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris began as a interpreter and designer, helping to produce Uyghur news and printed works. They had a family of three kids and enjoyed free to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a library containing 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 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 remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey proved to be a disastrous mistake. At the airport, immigration officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was finally allowed 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," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him board the flight knowing he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off 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 said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" Zeynure 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 feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up witnessing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the police 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 looking after my family; I didn't even have social media or Twitter. But I had to do something to rescue my husband – I had to tell the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, 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 wonderful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of vacations interrupted by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being banned from going to the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is addressing radicalism through 'controlling illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other nations, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals 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 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 college in another part of 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 overseas and told us perhaps we could meet and go together."

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

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and ready to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a comparable language and shared background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in diaspora. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at finding a place of safety abroad was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was subjected to was a more recent tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other nations to bend to its demands, including arresting and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert hanging over him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of chance to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed on the internet in the EU and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the Moroccan embassy in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the courts to determine.

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