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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she got a long-awaited phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been difficult.

But the information her husband Idris shared was more alarming. He told her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Contact everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Existence as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, 31 years old, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which makes up about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for ordinary acts like going to a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find refuge in their new home, but quickly realized they were mistaken.

"I was told that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its industrial plants in the country if Morocco released him," she said.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris began as a interpreter and artist, helping to publish Uyghur news and publications. 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 was employed in a book repository containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior detention, which he suspected was connected to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose 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 visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was finally allowed 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 said. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been using the international police agency Interpol to pursue political refugees and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon landing in Morocco.

What followed would lead her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: defy China, despite the risks.

Family Interference

Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure received an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" Zeynure explained. "I realized there must be some police there with them and just acted like I didn't know anything. But they insisted 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 softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up seeing women having their hijabs ripped off in public by the police and had been determined to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"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 reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to 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 picture from a book."

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

China claims it is tackling extremism through 'managing unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to genocide. Zeynure says she never felt free to practice her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They aimed for Uyghur people to forget their religion and heritage. They said 'you should trust in us, we provided you jobs and this good life here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after returning home from university in another part of 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 made the choice to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I realized 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 unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many believers and Uyghurs already residing there, with a comparable tongue and common background. "It felt like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the community in diaspora. "We have many children now in China growing up without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in pursuing critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's growing financial influence to pressure other nations to yield to its will, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Campaigning for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his deportation to China. She right away contacted as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated 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 social media. To her amazement, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's red notice after being urged to reexamine his case by advocacy organizations. 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|