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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she received a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. It had been four stressful days since their last communication, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been unbearable.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more devastating. He informed her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Reach out to everyone who can assist me," he said, before the line went dead.

Life as Uyghurs in Exile

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the mostly Muslim community, which constitutes about 50% of the population in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, over a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in so-called "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like going to a mosque or wearing a hijab.

The pair had joined thousands of Uyghurs who escaped to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find safety in exile, but quickly realized they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Chinese government threatened to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco freed him," Zeynure said.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure became an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, assisting to produce Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and felt able to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a book repository stocking Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris became fearful. Reports indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to extradite Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous arrest, which he suspected was linked to his work with advocates and supporting Uyghur culture. He chose to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a visa for the whole family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey proved to be a disastrous decision. At the airport, border control officials pulled him aside for interrogation. "When he was eventually permitted to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a set-up 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 using the global police agency Interpol to target political refugees and had asked for Idris to be placed on the agency's most-wanted "alert list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him take the flight knowing he would be arrested upon landing in Morocco.

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

Parental Interference

Soon after hearing of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an unexpected phone call from her parents in Xinjiang. She had been separated from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their going back 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 authorities 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 negative about China.'"

But with her husband's safety at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had grown up seeing 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 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 reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or killed. They pushed me to speak out."

Childhood in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of recollections of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I'd play with the animals and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the house and farm. It was too beautiful, like a picture from a book."

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

China says it is tackling extremism through 'managing illegal religious activities' and 'vocational education centers', but other countries, including the US, say its actions amount to ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her religious beliefs in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

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

She eventually decided to depart China after returning home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

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

A New Life in Turkey

Within 60 days they were married and ready 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 common background. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also help the Uyghur population in exile. "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 locating a place of safety overseas was short-lived. Beijing has become a global leader in pursuing dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, threats and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of repression: using China's growing economic leverage to pressure other countries to yield to its will, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Freedom

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window 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 advertised on the internet in the EU and the US and pleaded for help. She was brave despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the family members of other individuals.

Zeynure started demonstrating with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and sharing updates on online platforms. To her surprise, similar protests soon occurred in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were compelled to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the courts 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 deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was significant diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|