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In July 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her residence in Istanbul when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Casablanca. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more alarming. He informed her that upon landing in Morocco, he had been detained and imprisoned. Authorities informed him he would be extradited to China. "Call anyone who can help me," he urged, before the line went dead.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the last ten years, more than a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced mistreatment for commonplace actions like going to a mosque or using a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the 2010s. They thought they would find safety in their new home, but quickly realized they were mistaken.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials warned to close all its industrial plants in the nation if Morocco freed him," Zeynure explained.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a interpreter and artist, assisting to produce Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and felt free to live as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who worked in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the mid-year of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his previous arrest, which he believed was connected to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur heritage. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could request a visa for the family.

A Terrible Error

Departing Turkey turned out to be a disastrous decision. At the Istanbul airport, immigration officials pulled him 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 trap to me," Zeynure said. Her worst fears were realized when he was removed from the plane and arrested by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing 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 says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

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

Family Pressure

Shortly after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a disturbing warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can help you,'" she stated. "I knew 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. 'Avoid saying anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in public by the authorities 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 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 killed. They forced me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her elders, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of opportunity again. The relatives around the house and land. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a story."

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

China claims it is addressing extremism through 'controlling 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. "Individuals who went on religious journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were detained and sent to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you jobs and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after returning home from college in another part of China to a increasing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her classmates. "She was aware we both had taken the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur boys at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was unique."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were wed and prepared to leave for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the community in exile. "There are many children now in China growing up without Uyghur culture or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a secure location overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a prominent force in targeting dissidents living in exile through the use of electronic surveillance, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a more recent method of control: using China's increasing financial influence to pressure 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 against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to prevent his extradition to China. She right away reached out to as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find advertised online in the EU and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness 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 calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a statement saying his extradition was a issue for the courts to determine.

In early August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being pressed to review his case by advocacy organizations. But that did not prevent a Moroccan court later ruling he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|