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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 got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four agonizing days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board 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 arrested and jailed. Authorities told him he would be sent back to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he said, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which constitutes about half of the residents in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, more than a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like attending a place of worship or wearing a headscarf.

The couple had been among many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They hoped they would find security in their new home, but quickly discovered they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure stated.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris began as a interpreter and artist, helping to produce Uyghur media and publications. They had three children and felt able to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who worked in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior detention, which he believed was connected to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the whole family.

A Costly Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for questioning. "When he was eventually 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," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and arrested by border officials.

Over the last ten years, China has been utilizing the global police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had requested 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 arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: challenge China, regardless of the consequences.

Parental Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure received an surprising 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 jailed for several months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a chilling message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can assist you,'" she stated. "I knew there must be some authorities 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. 'Avoid doing anything except caring for your children,' they told me. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in public 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 these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to tell the truth to the world. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were agricultural workers. "I used to play with the animals and poultry. I don't know if I will ever have that kind of opportunity again. The relatives around the house and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of school holidays cut short by mandatory teachings of "political anthems" and being prohibited from attending the religious site or observing Ramadan.

China says it is addressing radicalism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'training centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on religious journey to Mecca abroad were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some issue in their brain.

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

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from college in another part of China to a growing crackdown on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her classmates. "She knew we both had taken the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could get together and go as a group."

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

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within 60 days they were wed and prepared to leave for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar language and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many children now in China being raised without Uyghur culture or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at locating a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing critics abroad through the use of electronic surveillance, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer tool of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to force other countries to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the call from Idris, and discovering 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 reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find advertised online in Europe and the US and begged for assistance. She was fearless despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the relatives of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's release. Moroccan officials were compelled to issue a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the judicial system to determine.

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